Tuesday, May 18, 2010

My Team Logo


Presented with the need to choose an original sport, I chose fishing. As it turns out, it is the only sport I’m good at. I mean, where else can you sit by a river with a beer for 4 hours and call it a sport? Too bad I’ve never caught anything but pondweed.

Concerned that this particular sport was too lethargic for a Greek hero’s liking, I narrowed it down to sport fishing or competitive fishing involving a team of two to three fisherman.

Next, a name was required. In a class exercise several names came up including The Woodspears, The Marble Warriors and The Burnt Greek.  None of them really ignited as ideas, but the random name ‘Dumbfishers’ caught my eye. My pencil decided to tack three Greek competitive fishermen on top who looked like they were having a good time. Something kind of clicked and this idea really seemed to be working.

The 'fishers' part of the name comes from the Greeks love of boats, fishing, and nets. I swear that the ‘dumb’ part comes from the Trojan Greeks who stupidly let in the Trojan horse, and not general Greeks themselves. Far be it for me to insult Greek intelligence, their amazing completely not outdated hairstyles, and their modesty when it comes to food...

 With name out of the way, I developed an illustrative graphics logo. Many sports logos include complicated vector illustrations into their logo (instead of a simple corporate style), so I know this will not be out of place. What will be out of place is the fun style I'll do it in, and I'll explain why.

Sports logos are always so angry and combative, and while these traits are great for pure competitive sports, they don’t fit in that well with something a little more laid back like fishing. Therefore I am using a fun, almost childish style to emphasise that fishing is different to every other sport: the fun is primarily in the doing nothing, not the competition. Doing a corporate type design would betray the fishing team's very essence.

I envisage 'The Dumbfishers' as a local fishing club based in Greek, having fun while also respective of ancient Greek traditions. I just couldn’t tie Achilles directly into the name but I vowed to include a ancient Greek chariot somewhere in the design as a nod to Hector’s humiliating drag behind a chariot while dead. This is much like how fisherman parade around with their massive prize fishes (or photos of).

The fisherman to be included behind the chariot are going to be very simplified and stylistic, similar to my current sketch (but developed much further of course). The typeface is going to be classic Greek, and the colours of the whole design will be white and blue - with orange or black touches if needed. I will try and include some Greek hairstyles on the fishermen in the final vector design...

Three Designs:
 
 

Thursday, May 6, 2010

AGIDEAS

TRENDS AND DESIGNERS

There were many, many design trends seen at AGIDEAS. In the following blog section I will discuss two of them.

Illustration 

When computers came out the revolutionized the world. Their effect reached everywhere, no less the areas of graphic design. Saving hours of time, they influenced design to the point of 'digital' being the new look.

More recently, illustration has started to come back as a backlash from all the 'digital-ization' running rampant.

Michael Mabry is a classic example of this. He tries to hand-craft everything, so as to challenge the mind and touch the heart. Ironically, he was approached by Adobe at one stage to do some digital work for them. However, he still kept to his hand-styled approach.


Eamo Donolley is a Melbourne illustrator. Growing up in the 80's, the culture of that period heavily influences his work. Hand-drawing his initial drawings, he places them into art programs such as photoshop and then colours them.



Australian Stuart Campbell blurs the boundary between digital and hand-drawn. While still illustrative, it is entirely based in the digital program Flash. His interactive web-comics are typical of this boundary blurring with the hand-drawn meeting digital and creating illustration.



Typographic

My second trend is typography. While typefaces have been around for centuries, their use in artwork is much more recent. An example of a typeface designer is Wayne Thompson, who works in Australia. Here is some of his work:


However the trend I'm discussing is typographic layout, not typography itself. Dean Poole uses typeface-based design very well. For the below image, Dean used the trademark, copyright and registered trademark symbols as part of the actual design. This work is for New Zealand law firm Hudson Gavin Martin and is indicative of what they are.

Andreas Uebele is a German design director. He works mainly with signage and corporate communications. He really pushes the boundary of signage such as the below work where he put typography on the ceiling, where it had never been placed before.



CONCEPT EVALUATION
Dan Formosa

Dan Formosa is a founding member of Smart Design. A US company, it specializes in product design and ergonomics.

His company did some work for Ford, which involved designing the user interface for a car. One of the key selling points was the 'green metre' which is designed to keep the driver environmentally conscious of his fuel usage. The biggest problem was that the driver needed to focus on the road and speedometer, not an extra gadget. So instead of a needle gauge, Dan made a computer screen that resembled a glass with raising or lowering liquid. This was placed so as to be seen with the driver's peripheral vision, avoiding distraction.

 
Quite often gadgets are designed to be loud and shiny. I believe this design is highly successful because it integrates with the driver and doesn't distract him or her.

SOURCES
http://www.agideas.net/home
agideas design conference 2010
http://www.smartdesignworldwide.com/
http://www.uebele.com/