Logos

I believe I wrote about this in the first blog about logos. below will be a serious of logos and we are going to see if people can spot what subliminal message or images they have in hidden in the logo!!

Good luck!!





The fedex logo was created in 1994 by Linden Leader and associates. If you look closely at the orange letters "E" and "x" there is a arrow pointing to the right. The arrow is suppose to signify precision and speed, some say it represent forward, moving forward. Whatever it means Linden and Leader and associates were very clever on creating the arrow with the two letters!!





Is there a number you see in Baskin Robbins logo? If not go back and look for a 3 and 1. Once you realize that there is a number in the logo it is pretty simple to pick it out. The number is 31, which represents the 31 different flavors they have.





This one might be a little more obvious. In the word Tour the R is tweaked into a man hunched over a yellow blob. See it now? Good job! I also think this was a clever design too. Even though most people know what Tour of France.


This one might be the hardest to see!! If you know anything from Toblerone chocolate, Toblerone is the name of the town that came up with the chocolate. And if you know anything else about Toblerone it is located in the mountains and the mountains are known for their bears... do you see it yet? Well if you look closely at the mountain at the white space you can see a dancing bear... pretty neat right? If not... I think so!





Last but not least is this logo. If you are not a baseball fan then you will not know this logo. The logo above is the Milwaukee Bucks. At first glance you may see a glove and a baseball but if you look a little closer you will see the initials of the ball club. The lower case b is the thumb and palm of the glove and the lower case m is the ringers!!


So the next time you are out and about make sure you spend that extra second or two looking at logo to see if you can find a subliminal image!!

Project 4

Project four was to design a tri-fold brochure. Coming into this project I had a few ideas how I wanted to design the brochure. I already had a solid topic that I wanted to do which evolves around Samoan tribal tattoos. The biggest obstacle with this project was finding pictures that are big enough to fit on the brochure. Most of the pictures that I saved on my flash drive at home were no were near the correct size that I needed. So I tweaked my search and searched for images on google images for images that were 4 MP or larger. That alone narrowed down my selection and none of the pictures that I originally sought to use were not on the list that were shown. After sifting through countless pictures I was able to find four to six solid images that I could use for the project.

The next hardest thing for me was the cover page. After several designs I was not able to come up with an appealing front page that would grab peoples attention. Finally after several trial and errors and some help from Amy, I was able to settle with an image that covered the whole front page. The image is of a individual sitting on the front of a small boat with his traditional lava lava looking out into the ocean. The person has his shirt off so you are able to see his traditional tattoo. The small title in white letters saying "Traditional Samoan Tattoo" on the back ground of the blue sky and then "The Pe'a" which is on the bottom of the page with white lettering on a black background which is the shadow underneath a compartment on the boat.

The brochure gives a quick back ground of what the "Pe'a" tattoo is. The Pe'a tattoo was a way to symbolize that you were no longer a boy and that you were now a man amongst the tribe. It was a right of passage into manhood. The tattoo would cover the lower torso for the men ranging from the hip to the back to the knees. This process was done in pairs and never by its self. The tattoo traditionally takes 10 days. 5 days of tattooing and 5 days of rest. During the 5 days of tattooing women would be chanting a song in the back ground while the elder was tattooing the person the old fashion way with sharp bone on an end of a stick and repeatedly hitting the stick into the skin. On the days that the boy wasn't being tattooed he would bathe in the ocean to heal up his wounds.

Overall I am very happy how the brochure turned out. I believe the pictures are nice and sharp and should grab everyone attention with the amount of tattooing that is done on the individual.

Project 3

Project three was pretty hectic. I started pretty late on the assignment so off the back time was against me. My original idea for this project was to do something that evolves around being fit, working out or something along those lines. But as I started to work on this theme for a class and a half I ran into a huge problem!! All my ideas were already taken from Nike and Gatorade ads. So I had to scratch that idea.

My next idea was going to be about Dooms day preppers. The poster was going to be set up with black background, and in bold letters say Dooms day preppers. Below that would say "Don't come running to me when the shit hits the fan" The phrase would be in bold letters that were stretched and made more bold. The reason I wanted it to be more bold was that the phrase and title would have a picture of a nuclear explosion going off in the type face. As you were reading "Dooms Day Preppers. Don't come running to me when the shit hits the fan" you were able to see the image on a larger scale. But that idea was shot down by Amy so I had one more class and the weekend to come up with a good idea.

I eventually settled on a topic that I have been following real close which involves North Korea and the United Nations. So for this I started with a black background and kind of used the idea of 1+1=2. So I started off with some kind of symbolic picture of North Korea, whether it be the flag or the face of Kim Jong-Un then I would have the plus symbol and some kind of picture of a nuclear device or the nuclear symbol. I ended up with a picture of a mobile long range missile launcher. After that I had the equal sign of a skull. At the bottom of the poster in white lettering it said "Stop North Korea from obtaining Nukes"

The message I was trying to get across was that if we do not put strict regulation against North Korea, they could possibly start another world war. It is a topic that I follow because my dad is in the military and also because I think most people do not take this topic very serious.



North Korea + Nuclear missiles = Death/Destruction

Excercise 2

My magazine layout is giving me the most trouble out of all the exercises and projects that we have done so far this semester! I do not know why but it just seems like everything I do is too simple? I look to my fellow classmates and see what they are doing and I say to myself “Why didn’t I think of that?” Maybe because I’ve never really looked at a magazine layout and how everything flows. Maybe it’s because I am not very imaginative when it comes to magazine layouts. Whatever that causes may be I do not like this one bit!

During class, I am happy that I expressed my unhappiness with Amy! She was not only able to give me input about my progress but she was able to put it up on the big screen and everyone in class was able to give me their input. Other then the kerning and spacing of my layout, I am very appreciative to everyone that was able to critique my work. I definitely will take everyone’s input into consideration when finishing up my project!

So for the next class, which is the last work day for this exercise I am going to try to incorporate the feedback I got from Amy and my fellow classmates. I am going to work on making the title stick out more. Some ideas for that, 1) I am going to make the picture bigger and by doing that I will make the title part of the picture with white letters. I am also going to make the title bigger!! Hopefully with the dark back ground and white letters and the colorful “color” will make the title stand out more and not get lost in the picture. 2) I am going to work on the spacing with columns. Once Amy helped my move the spacing of the columns over it made the whole column flow better and easier to read!

I also read the article in the last class and possibly stick to certain colors since the article talked about what each color means since my first approach of placing random pictures in the article didn’t really flow very well! Hopefully after spring break I will be able to quickly finish my article layout so I can move on from this excercise!! Yayyy

Exercise 1

Trying to recreate the sense of movement in the painting for "The Poet" was both simple and frustrating. The painting by Egon Schiele seems very dark and gloomy as if the person is trapped in a dark place. The placement of the head and angles that his limbs are placed suggest that he is cramped possible trapped in a tight place. Trunk of a car or in a small cave?

The simple part of the painting is that it uses a lot of dark colors and in the painting and makes the observer use his or her imagination. Schiele makes the face, chin and hands very visible along with what looks to me his white pants. The way he uses the dark red in the background as if hes trying to make an outline of his body but not making it obvious. I feel like the more I look at "The Poet" the more I see in the position of certain reds in the painting.

The frustrating part of this exercise is only being able to use a square shape and having a limited number of the squares that I could use. I definitely found myself using an excess of 20 squares in my painting because I tried to be as detailed as possible. It took me awhile to pick and choose what would come off to have less squares. After a few minutes I decided to pay more attention to the shades around his body then the details of the body and face. I used a similar color of red that was seen in the painting trying to make an outline of the body. I also saw there was a hint of blue in the painting as well and I through two shapes of blue which made it stick out.

Tuesday when I am in class, since it is a work day I am going to try to realign all the red to somehow create a outline of the body. I think once I am able to create that outline, observers will have a clearer idea of the person in the painting is in cramped dark place. I will also try to have the blue in there as well just to have it pop out a little. My goal will be to spend less detail on what is obvious to the eye and more on the blackness and red of the painting. After all I am sure Schiele spent more time placing strokes of red and faint white then on the details of his face and hands.

Project 1

Coming into project 1 I really had no clue what to do. After watching the videos in class and doing some research on my own I was able to compile some ideas. The next step for me was very difficult. The process of thinking of what I want to do and actually making it happen are completely two different things!! I’m not sure why the ones I came up didn’t pan out. It could have been from my lack of knowledge of the program or frustration. After a few trial and errors I was able to make an idea come to life on In Design.

My idea only needed two shapes, spheres and squares. The idea is very simple and played off the game bingo. I wanted spheres to have descriptive words of my lifestyle and what I believe in. So for example one sphere would have the word “GYM” because I like to go to the gym. Another sphere would have the word “Food” because I love to eat! So I wanted those descriptive words all piled up like it was in a container and it only had a small hole that would let one sphere out at a time. The spheres would fall onto what looks like steps that will bounce off and land at the other corner. The first three spheres would have the letter “P”, “T” and “H” for my initials. So one by one all the descriptive words of what makes me who I am would fall one by one next to my initials!!

The steps would represent my nationality, which is Samoan, written in the ascending stair case and the word “STRONG” would be on the bottom. The reason why I put “STRONG” on the bottom of the pyramid because it represents that I can handle all of who I am and the pressures of being an individual. And plus I am freakishly strong! I also wanted to fill in every block of the pyramid with a letter that eventually spelled something out horizontally and vertically but that was just too hard with the ascending and base word I already had. I also thought of putting words in each box but it was just too busy and did not appeal very well to the eyes.

The word “STURDY” can be seen at a diagonal which holds all the spheres in place in the top right. I’m not really sure why I put the word “STURDY” there, I couldn’t put strong because it was already on the bottom. So I figured I needed another acronym of strong and thought “STURDY” would fit and I believe it does!

            I am not really sure why I picked the colors I did. I just picked the colors because they worked very well with each other and it made everything stick out. So I’m not really sure if my work reflects my personality. I did it because it looked appealing to me.

            Over all I am pretty satisfied with what I was able to think in my head and relay it on In Design! I really didn’t think I would enjoy this project but I really did! I feel like the more I learn about the program and what I can and can’t do the easier it will be to make my ideas real!

Helvetica

I never realized how Helvetica is widely used through out the world. Many well known business, iconic signs and names all use Helvetica! Is that a good or bad thing?

If you think about it, Helvetica is considered by most the easiest type face to read. It is simple, straight to the point and you do not have to strain your eyes to see it. I guess in some ways you can say it is perfect?

Since Helvetica is widely used and been in use since 1957, why is everyone so obsessed with making one that is better. From what I heard from other typographers, helvetica is perfect? So how do you make something perfect, more perfect? I believe that is impossible! Any way you want to take the word "perfect",whether it be a noun, verb or adjective there is no way to make PERFECT more PERFECT!!

I also do not understand how typographers are saying that some type face are used incorrectly? Is that possible? I understand the Creator of the type face specifically made the font for certain things but isn't type face an expression of art. And isn't art in the eye of the beholder? If you ask me I could care less how a type face is used or widely used as long as it is appealing to the eyes!

 

So what if Helvetica is around for a few more years or decades? You can have the endless complaints of how its been overly used, improper way of using the type face and we as society need to come up with a new type face that is more perfect then perfect. Till then, enjoy Helvetica and the other widely or improper used fonts that we have now. One day someone along the line will create a type face that is considered to be the NEW Helvetica then after a decade or two we can start this chatter of how its widely used and used improperly!!


Puka out!

PS I think someone should make a grafitti font. Typographers should walke the train yard once a week and get ideas by the fonts they see on trains! I think it would be a fun font to use! Now all I have to do is set back and wait for it. :-)