- [Voiceover] All design is style-driven.
Some styles are accurately defined as a trend
and go in and out of style over time.
I want to cover six distinct categories of style
you can use when working on a logo design project.
Now, these are what I've defined as six categories,
it's not like an industry standard,
but I think it's a good rule of thumb
when approaching anything related to identity design.
So let's take a look at each.
The first style I want to go over is graphic symbols.
Now, this is what most people think of
when they think of logo design,
they think of graphic symbols, graphic marks,
and that's fine, this is actually one distinct category.
Now, the way I define graphic symbols
is somebody may look at it, like this mark showing here,
and they might not immediately understand what it means
or what it's trying to communicate.
Sometimes they will, but many times they won't.
It actually works better in context with the typography
that defines the name or the genre
of the company it represents.
In this case, this was actually for
the Department of Homeland Security,
and it was for a threat assessment division of that.
Now, we're gonna take a look at another graphic mark,
and if you look at this and I asked you,
how would you define the meaning of this,
you might come up with some ideas,
but it's not a guarantee that you would come up with
the idea that this represents a global distribution network.
But that's what this mark was used for.
So it's okay to have this, because as long as
the full package, the full concept of the branding
you're working on, both with typography and all the context
it's gonna be used in is gonna define the meaning
of the company.
Now, if we look at this mark, what would you think this is?
I've actually used this mark a couple times,
one time it was for a personal creativity workshop
and I used it for that, but it's never really
been used for a client project,
but a client project came along and
I was able to use it for that.
But would you be able to discern what that is
without seeing the typography that goes with it?
Probably not, but that doesn't mean
it's not gonna work good for a company like this
which is, it was a logo iteration for
a hotel's in-house spa.
Let's take a look at another one,
and this shows you basically what a graphic mark
in context of the typography,
so this would be called a modular logo mark,
and we're gonna go over the various formats
of logo design in an upcoming movie,
but this is one of them.
It's called modular, and it's modular because
the logo isn't embedded with the type,
it can be removed or separated from the typography.
And if you look at the logo mark here
and you didn't have the context of the type with it,
you would be hard-pressed to define exactly
what the meaning of it is,
but in context of the typography
you have more information to work off of.
Now, this is obviously a specialized conference
for specialized industry, so even with the typography
you might be left a little in the dark
as to what this is, but in terms of open-source information
and protection, it works well as a representation,
and that's basically what a graphic symbol comes down to.
It's to represent whatever the company product
or genre is.
Now we're gonna look at the next one,
the next one is what I categorize as iconic.
Now here's the same project that I worked on previously,
so if I show you the previous one,
this is with a graphic symbol,
now this is one with an iconic mark.
Now some of you might be thinking, well,
isn't that a graphic symbol too?
Well, the difference between graphic symbol is
in context of itself this graphic symbol
used in this design, you wouldn't be able to
discern specifically what it meant,
you would just be guessing at what it meant
because it's a graphic mark to represent something,
it's not based off of literal metaphors visually,
whereas this one is.
And that's what separates iconic from graphic,
is it's, plays off of metaphors a lot,
so this one's playing off of a shield,
so that might give you an insight
that it has to do with something security or protection,
and then this inner mark plays off of a keyhole,
which has to do with security and looking into something.
So there's some conceptual cues within iconography
to lead you in the direction and explaining the bigger story
that the iconic mark is supposed to represent.
Here's another one.
This iconic one is playing off of the literal hawk,
or an eagle in this case, and the type kind of
gives meaning to the whole context, free speech.
So the format of the whole mark
looks like a speaking bubble.
We'll take a look at another one.
This one's a children's hospital,
so this was based out of Louisiana,
so I played off of an alligator and just a fun nesting
of a heart shape within that.
So iconography is more literal than it is figurative.
Here's another one, this was for an investment fund
called Commodore, and so it plays off of the meaning
behind the name of the fund itself.
Now here's another example of using
iconic plus graphic symbols.
So I'm taking a graphic symbol but
imbuing it with some meaning because it has
iconic metaphors in it.
These are actually the blades used in a shredder,
but it makes the form of an S.
All of these kind of form an S, with the exception
of the bottom right one, but the bottom right one
represents the actual shredding of the paper,
which is little pieces, and that is what this was for,
it was for a company that shreds documents,
and this was one of the mockups with the type
that we presented for this project.
Now, the next category is logo type.
This is where it's type-based design
to work out a motif for a logo iteration,
and this one was for a health food
kind of vending machine business.
Here's another one based off of typography,
this one was actually custom typography,
and I'm gonna go over the specific design in more detail
in an upcoming movie, but once again,
it's considered a logo type design
using a graphic mark in combination with it.
Here's another one where it's basing typography,
kinda plays the big role in this,
but it also uses an iconic element in it as well.
So this is more of what I would call an encapsulated format,
even though it's not held within any kind of hose shape
it still works together and you could remove
the iconic image from it but that's what gives it character.
So this is a logo type where I just customized
existing letter forms to pull it off.
Here's another one from the same project,
and this is one where I used custom logo type
to pull off the direction used here.
And so custom logo types are just simply that,
working out your own customized letter forms
that align with the given project.
So this one was for a small town in Louisiana
that was rebranding itself, and here's another one,
this was for a youth outreach that works in urban areas
of large cities, so we kind of played off the whole
kind of street art vibe to pull this off.
And here's another one, this was for
a production managed by the Disney company,
Jim Henson's company, called Skrumps.
So we used letter forms that capture the attributes
of the characters who are part of this show.
Now, the next category is what I call stylized.
Some of you might have different terminologies
you use for this, that's fine, but stylized
is all about realistic proportions but executed
in a style that is very stylized,
very graphic and simplified, but it still captures
the true essence of proportion.
Now an iconic design would get unproportionate
with its use of how things relate to one another
in terms of its sizing,
but stylized is about realistic proportions
and this was a brand mark for a company
that produces ceiling fans, so this just shows the usage
of the brand mark on a ceiling fan here,
and here's a light system where that logo mark was used.
The next category is illustrative.
Now, my personal favorite podcast in the universe
is called Futility Closet, I loved it,
and they contacted me, they had no idea I was a fan,
by the way, they contacted me to brand them,
and I was just, like, freaking out,
because I love this podcast, it's fun,
they talk about forgotten history, basically,
so all these historical stories that
people have forgotten about,
and I created this brand character called Mr. Curious,
and he's gonna pop up again a little later in the course,
but this was a more illustrative approach to logo design
and also the iTunes cover art that I created
for that as well.
Now illustrative can also be used in a very graphic way,
so here's a brand character in logo design that I created
for just a heating and cooling specialist
based out of Chicago, so we had fun
coming up with this character.
We also renamed his company, and he got a really great name,
like, I still can't believe that domain was available,
but illustrative approach was used in this.
Here's another one where it was for a noodle company
based out of San Francisco, so I played off of the concept
of noodles to capture that mood,
and that's the benefit of picking an appropriate style is,
it's not just to represent the company but it can reflect
in terms of what they provide and what they do.
Now when you pick a specific style and you match it
with a certain type of format,
and I'm gonna go over these formats in an upcoming movie,
this format in the bottom left here is encapsulated.
It's held within a shape.
The one on the right here, this is custom typography,
but it's also somewhat encapsulated in that everything
has a hierarchy and works together.
Here's a modular design up in the top right here,
with this character that's a music note
that can be moved away from the type
and worked separately if you want,
and then a logo type shown in the top left.
So these are how different formats,
combined with different styles,
can give you different iterations to pitch to the client,
to show to the client, in order to present
all the possibilities they could do
for their brand identity.
This was for a radio station out of Cincinnati.
So picking an appropriate style is one of the most important
decisions you'll make when designing a logo,
or any design project for that matter.
A well-chosen style will help you
define a brand's personality and aesthetic
that everything else that's gonna follow afterwards
will play off of.
So don't rush it, take your time and choose appropriately.