15 wonderfully simple logo designs

by www.logodesignlove.com

It’s no coincidence that the most memorable logo designs are also the most simple in appearance. You want the identities you create to be instantly recognisable, acting as a memorable identifier for the company they represent. A consumer will normally just take a fleeting glimpse at a logo, and an overly complex mark will 

make that opportunity redundant.

Here are 15 examples of simple, successful designs.

1/ WWF
Designed by Sir Peter Scott, in 1961.

2/ Shell
Designed by Raymond Loewy, in 1971.

3/ Bayer
Designed by Bayer, in 1904.

4/ Message
Designed by Sam Dallyn, in 2001.

5/ USA Network
Designed by Peloton Design, in 2005.

6/ Innocent
Designed by Deepend, in 1999.

7/ British Golf Museum
Designed by Tayburn, in 2004.

8/ London Underground
Designed by Edward Johnston, in 1918.

9/ Mitsubishi Motors
Designed by Yataro Iwasaki, in 1870.

10/ Shelter
Designed by Johnson Banks, in 2003.

11/ 3M
Designed by Siegal & Gale, in 1977.

12/ Apple
Designed by Regis McKenna Advertising, in 1977.

13/ Penguin
Designed by Edward Young, in 1935.

14/ Families
Designed by Herb Lubalin, in 1980.

15/ Waterways Trust
Designed by Pentagram, in 2000.

Taste The Rainbow: A New Logo For Skittles

From: logodesignerblog.com

London designer and designers’ favorite Miles Newlyn worked with Dragon Rouge to create a new logo for the Skittles brand name of candies. His multi-colored tongue concept is a literal though stylized translation of the brand’s slogan, “Taste the rainbow.”

The official Skittles website is worth checking out too.  What are your thoughts?

Basic Typography Terminology

By Eric Miller, About.com Guide

Typeface

A typeface refers to a group of characters, such as letters, numbers, and punctuation, that share a common design or style. Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica and Courier are all typefaces.

Font

Fonts refer to the means by which typefaces are displayed or presented. Helvetica in movable type is a font, as is a TrueType font file.

 

Type Families

The different options available within a font make up a type family. Many fonts are at a minimum available in roman, bold and italic. Other families are much larger, such as Helvetica Neue, which is available in options such Condensed Bold, Condensed Black, UltraLight, UltraLight Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, etc.

 

 

Serif Fonts

Serif fonts are recognizable by the small lines at the ends of the various strokes of a character. As these lines make a typeface easier to read by guiding the eye from letter to letter and word to word, serif fonts are often used for large blocks of text, such as in a book. Times New Roman is an example of a common serif font.

 

 

Sans Serif Fonts

Serifs are small lines at the ends of character strokes. Sans serif, or without serif, refers to typefaces without these lines. Sans serif fonts are often used when a large typeface is necessary, such as in a magazine headline. Helvetica is a popular sans serif typeface. Sans serif fonts are also common for website text, as they can be easier to read on screen. Arial is a sans serif typeface that was designed specifically for on-screen use.

 

Point

The point is used to measure the size of a font. One point is equal to 1/72 of an inch. When a character is referred to as 12pt, the full height of the text block (such as a block of movable type), and not just the character itself, is being described. Because of this, two typefaces at the same point size may appear as different sizes, based on the position of the character in the block and how much of the block the character fills.

 

Pica

The pica is generally used to measure lines of text. One pica is equal to 12 points, and six picas are equal to one inch.

 

Baseline

The baseline is the invisible line on which characters sit. While the baseline may differ from typeface to typeface, it is consistent within a typeface. Rounded letters such as "e" will extend slightly below the baseline.

 

 

X-height

The x-height is the distance between the meanline and the baseline. It is referred to as the x-height because it is the height of a lowercase "x." This height can vary greatly between typefaces.

 

 

 

Tracking, Kerning and Letterspacing

The distance between characters is controlled by tracking, kerning and letterspacing. Tracking is adjusted to change the space between characters consistently across a block of text. This may be used to increase legibility for an entire magazine article. Kerning is the reduction of space between characters, and letterspacing is the addition of space between characters. These smaller, precise adjustments may be used to tweak a specific word, such as in a logo design, or a large headline of a story in a newspaper. All of the settings may be experimented with to create artistic text effects.

Leading

Leading refers to the distance between lines of text. This distance, measured in points, is measured from one baseline to the next. A block of text may be referred to as being 12pt with 6pts of extra leading, also known as 12/18. This means there is 12pt type on 18pts of total height (12 plus the 6pts of extra leading).

 

Good Design Is Essential

From Linda Roeder, former About.com Guide

The right design for your site is the one that's right for you. How do you know what's right for you when there are so many different styles of Web design out there? There are so many different ways you can design your site that it's easy for someone to get so lost when designing their site that they may give up all together.
You have to remember that the choices are all yours, because it's your site, and you have to decide what you like. Choices like which colors, styles, fonts, graphics and writing styles to use are all very personal choices and not to be made lightly. What you say and do on your Web site says a lot about who you are. Here are some of the basics you need to consider when designing your site.

• Navigation
  Easy to use navigation is essential to a good Web site. If people can't find what's on your site, well, they just won't stick around, will they?
• Ads
  Too many advertisements on your site make for a bad user experience. Try for well placed, highly noticeable ads instead.
• Maintenance
  After creating a Web site you have to maintain it. If you have links to other Web sites you need to check them periodically to make sure the links still take you somewhere because sometimes Web sites disappear.
• Things That Blink
  Blinking can be annoying and you don't want to annoy your readers.
• Noise
  A lot of people like to add music to their Web sites. That's all well and good, but if it's a loud song and your reader jumps out of their seat when they open your Web page they will leave very quickly and never return.
• Pop-Ups
  Not just pop-up ads but also pop-up boxes. You know the ones when you open a Web site and it asks for your name. Ok, that's kind of cute but if you have 5 in a row asking different questions or you have one on every page on your site, let's face it, that's annoying.
• Graphics
  Graphics a an important part of a Web site. They add color, attitude, theme. They're necessary, right? Right, as long as you don't over do it. Too many graphics not only make your site upload really slow but it also makes it look like a kid scribbled on your page.
• Color
  We all know that reading black and white pages is boring. That's why we add color to them. Adding the right colors to your pages makes for great, easy to read pages. You have to make sure that the background colors don't conflict with the text colors. If you use loud colors or colors that conflict, people won't want to read your page and will look elsewhere.
• Fonts
  You don't have to use the same old boring, standard font for your text if you don't want to. There are many other's that you can use to make your writing look fancier or just better.
• Your Style
  Everyone has their own writing style. You can be funny, serious or just yourself. How you write your site is up to you and you need to choose the style that's right for your site.
• Layout
  How do you want your page to look? Do you want all the text to the right and graphics on the left, or visa versa? Do you want an add at the top of the page or do you want all your ads on the side? Having the layout of all your pages look the same looks better to your readers then if you have the layout for every page different. That doesn't mean that you can't make each page different to go along with what you wrote on that page it just means that the basic layout should be at least similar.
• Content
  What is your site going to be about? What kinds of things are you going to write about? Of course, this is completely up to you. Whenever you write something make sure you spell check it and, if you have time, re-read it to make sure there are not grammatical errors.