Friday, March 23, 2007

Logos, logos, logos!!!

For the majority of this week we have been concentrating on working on our Ambient World logo. I was quite worried about this on Wednesday as I was not entirely happy with the quality of my designs. Despite putting some time aside in my self study to come up with around twenty rough designs I felt that this was nowhere near enough and I did not really feel that any of the designs would be appropriate for Ambient World. I felt that this was because I had focused on stereotypical musical elements such as musical notes and microphones, after having the experience of listening to the type of music that they sell it was quite clear that I needed to take a different approach to my designs altogether. I quite enjoyed coming up with the new designs as I felt that they were of a much higher quality compared to my earlier efforts and would be much more suited to this type of music. For the majority of my designs I tried to incorporate some kind of space/electronica theme and I would welcome any feedback you may have on my designs at the bottom of this entry.

After listening to my album Planetarium this week I was pleasantly surprised that it was not as bad as I thought it would be. It is definitely not something that I would go out and buy but I feel that is the whole point of this assignment. You cannot always expect to be working on something that you like so being able to create designs for something which is not familiar to you or not to your taste is something that we need to learn to do. I am however definitely enjoying this task and quite pleased with some of the ideas I have come up with so far.

One thing that Steve has stressed to us this week is the importance of keeping accurate weekly planning sheets and overall time plans for the whole assignment. After the experience of the first assignment where Steve planned what we should have done by what date I immediately felt at ease knowing where I should be at any stage in the assignment. When on the start of our second and third assignments we had to make our own mini-deadlines I knew that I had to put more time and effort into time management and I feel that it is now something which I am quite comfortable with and really helps when we have larger assignments such as A7 The Fax of Life. I feel that if I didn’t plan as much as I do I would definitely fall behind and not be able to manage the workload effectively as I would like. I think that management of time is probably one of the key skills to have if you were to go on and get a job in this industry so being able to do it well now can only be advantageous for the future.

As we are fast approaching the Easter break I hope to have a completed logo drawn up in Freehand by this time next week and also have full screen designs for my style guide website.



Logo ideas:




5 comments:

Craig Burgess said...

I think the first and 3rd designs are quite similar to each other, but I like the third one the most.

The second one has potential, but I think it's a tad predictable. Try and think of different ways of expressing Ambient World, or the AW. Or just different ways of expressing what they're all about.

Dean said...

I like the curvy ones. They convey ambience and give a sense of flowing or movement. Try the others with a few different fonts to make them less standard, the label you are designing for is producing music that is far from standard. There are some good conntenders at www.1001freefonts.com.

Julian Dyer said...

I like the planet one the most, Ben. I do think that the planet’s stroke and ring could be thicker, and this would help when using it at a small size while adding to the ‘Presence’ part of logo design. I also think the letters could be larger. Might be worth a try to see what it looks like, it would only take a minute or two.

James said...

I also quite like the album that I've picked, it's more like a background piece of music though.

It is right that you won't always get to design for the things you like. I never let it get me down though, you just have to think "what can I do that will make it different from the rest?" with that in mind, it gives you the challenge to make it different.

Craig Allington said...

The first design looks a little like Scott's (from what I remember) and the third design I still think looks like New Look.

The planet design I quite like, but once again have seen a few in the group similar. Although the dot in the A is a nice touch.

We shall have to wait until tomorrow to find out what designs everyone else has come up with, no doubt the majority of mine are similar to other peoples too.