At first glance, Nolan’s Cheddar appears to be an advertising campaign from a company pushing the boundaries of cheese. It’s not. The video is actually a small film by John Nolan, a creative and talented animatronics studio. The film pits a mouse against it’s long-time rival, the mouse trap. But with the power of cheese, anything is possible.
Guarantee you laughing at this.
The Art Institute of Boston Viewbook, designed by Visual Dialogue.
For a third time now, Visual Dialogue, a design studio in Boston, has led the design of The Art Institute of Boston viewbook. Visual Dialogue’s style of work has earned them numerous awards, including some for AIB. Award winning work brings in future work. But for the 2010 viewbook, Visual Dialogue has done something quite different. They have brought in the students of The Art institute of Boston to help with the design project. Students get to work in a real-world environment and Visual Dialogue gets to known the core target market of AIB.
Students of AIB were brought into the project for research and design.
Normally dealing with non-profit organizations, the team of students got to tackle all aspects of the design project. Starting with the initial client meeting, collaborating with photographers, the research strategist and copywriter, presentation of concepts, and final production.
More from the Art Institute of Boston viewbook.
These real world projects are great stories for the school to tell and for future students to hear. The viewbook itself showcases the talent of the students and the level of design being taught at The Art Institute of Boston. Overall, good work. As for awards? who knows, but the viewbook is really making me think about their master’s degree program.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been re-designing my logo for my design studio and blog, Breezy Creative Design. A new website re-design is in the works and will be introduced upon the selection of the new logo design. Through all of my sketches and conceptualizing, the four logo designs below have made it to the final selection process. With your help, I would like to finally settle on one.
Please read the concept behind each logo and choose one through the poll. Also, please provide your feedback below, as I would like to know what your thoughts are on the logo designs.
Loading ...Note: Click vote, not results. For a description and design concept information, scroll down.
Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (Der Untergang) has given youtube followers much comedic footage to work with. Popular searches on youtube include Hitler gets a Mac, vista problems and a banning from xbox live. The best in my opinion is Hitler freaks out over comic sans below. What makes the video stand out includes the dialogue and subtitles that match some certain German words, unlike the above mentioned videos that disregard entire length of sentences and obvious words like, Fuhrer.
Very funny, check it out.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but caught some scenes on youtube. If your curious to know what was really said, check out the footage and subtitles below.
PLP Architecture is a one year old firm that has been around the block a few times. The firms founders; Lee Polisano, David Leventhal, Fred Pilbrow, Karen Cook, and Ron Bakker are the same former partners of the KPF London office for the past 20 years. PLP’s former experience speaks for itself. With business in motion, PLP Architecture sought help from Pentagram for logo and identity design.
The new logo design by Pentagram makes use of the DIN typeface, redrawn into a stenciled version, reminiscent of architectural hand-drawn lettering. By letter, DIN is a spacious font, providing a modern and clean feel to the logo and identity PLP is after. As fonts go, DIN is spacious and thin. The thinness of the font requires the logo to be used at larger sizes than normal on all branding material. Even the under construction website. A Very bold move and quite differentiated to other architecture firms. New projects are under way and not yet finished to add here, but if PLP Architecture’s work is anything like their design at KPF, their new identity design is very well suited to their business model.
Architectural designs by Kohn Pederson Associates.
The new branding material utilizes a structured and minimalistic system to provide it’s information.
The PLP Architecture logo is displayed at a larger than normal scale.
Displaying the size difference of the logo on branding collateral.
Overall, Pentagram did a good job at creating the identity for PLP Architecture. I’ll be keeping up with their website to review the unveil of the new web design.
Really Good Logos Explained shares the thoughts and opinions of 4 designers on the topic of logo design. Margo Chase, Rian Hughes, Ron Miriello, and Alex W. White explain what makes each logo design effective, or how the design could have been improved. What might be hard form some, they had to present their material with a straightforward approach and explain it with 5 sentences or less. this, in my opinion, made for a good read.
The limit of writing space the four designers had provided straightforward, to-the-point critiques that designers and non-designers can engage in. Giving the opportunity for the reader to side with a designer on their comment. At times, I felt my head nodding up and down, left and right, with what a designer wrote and disagreeing with another. While most of the critiques were positive or provided positive feedback, some critiques felt more like negative criticism. Other critiques limited the topic of concept and focused too much attention on letter spacing.
Brightlines, simple and conceptual logo design by Mytton Williams.
Really Good Logos Explained does a good job of classifying the logo designs into 4 chapters; 1. Loud & Proud 2. Sleek & Subtle 3. Shelf-Savvy and 4. Smart & Effective. The book also include a bonus chapter of not so good logos and a just-for-fun section with author favorites. If you pick up the book, look for chapter 4 (my favorite), it provides examples of smart design and simplified solutions to design problems. No trends, only well executed logo design.
At times, logo design critiques were limited to one, instead of a full critique by all designers.
A drawback of the book falls on the lack of a full analysis by all designers on all logo designs. At times, only one designer shared his or her input, eliminating the possibility of contrasting views between creative minds.
Overall, Really Good Logos Explained is good at presenting various types and styles of logo designs and sharing what makes them standout. Providing designers with useful information to apply on their next logo design project. It’s available at Amazon, starting at $27.94.
AkzoNobel logo image taken from the Pentagram website, no longer visible there.
Pentagram was founded in 1975 by partners John McConell and Colin Forbes. Today, it’s principals still share equal rights but the number has changed. Partners include Lorenzo Apicella, James Biber, Michael Bierut, Michael Gericke, Luke Hayman, Angus Hyland, Domenic Lippa, Abbott Miller, Justus Oehler, Harry Pearce, John Rushworth, William Russell, Paula Scher, DJ Stout, Lisa Strausfield, and Daniel Weil.
Earlier in the week, I posted Pentgram: Winner at the Transform Awards 2010. One of the winning projects is the identity design for AkzoNobel. The AkzoNobel identity design pulled three awards, two gold and one silver. The winning Pentagram partner, Angus Hyland, led the project.
One problem.
Saffron, a creative brand consulting group has the same AkzoNobel logo design project in their featured work section. One of three main principals of Saffron, Wolly Olins, has ties to AkzoNobel and the original logo design ( known as Bruce) that he helped design in the 1980′s, as head of Wolff Olins. His success in the 80′s brought AkzoNobel back for their next logo design.
Along with finding the original logo design at Saffron, I also found some concepts and drawings for the new logo design below.
Original AkzoNobel logo design by Wally Olins and design team in the 1980′s while at Wolff Olins.
Early concept to have Bruce in liquid form, to easily represent the products of the company.
AkzoNobel brought in Martijn Rijven to explore the gesture and dynamics of the new Bruce.
More sketches of Bruce by Martijn Rijven.
Upon hearing the news of the Pentagram win, I headed over to their site, where I found the large AkzoNobel logo. Visit the site now, and the new Bruce logo design image is nowhere to be found. It seems they have taken it down for some reason.
my guess is Saffron designed the logo design and Pentagram designed the branding and identity design system. My question is, why not mention Saffron anywhere on their website or the Transform Awards 2010? After all, the logo design is the foundation for the branding material.
