Ice cream designs

In another class of mine, Communication Research we were asked to get into groups and pick a semester topic. Our semester topic that my group picked was Abbott's Frozen Custard. We were asked to do several projects through out the semester. One of the task that we had to do was to conduct a focus group. During our focus group we asked the participants to pick out logos of Ice cream parlors that they like and what about them attracts them to that design.

One of the question was to see which Abbott's logo was more appealing to customers. Below are the choices the participants had to choose from.

A)B)
C)
D)

Most of the participants chose B. After asking why they choose B All of them said that they had no idea what Abbott's frozen Custard is and having an actual image of the ice cream cone helps them know what the product is. Option B is actually the current logo for Abbott's Frozen Custard. The other reason why is that people are not very familiar with what frozen custard is too.

Another fun fact about the logo is that you can not find the font anywhere else. The logo is actually the signature of the individual who first started the company. Abbott's Frozen Custard is based out of Rochester NY and is actually looking to branch out further into the state and throughout the United States.

What I really like about option B is that the colors are nice and warm and inviting. The actual name is nice and neat even though it is in cursive. The picture of the ice cream cone gives a visual of what the product is and draws the attention of people.



Above is a Anderson's logo as well. As you can see they are very similar in design. With the name of the company and a cone. Personally Abbott's design is better from everything with the ice cream cone and how the letters are designed.

Exercise 5: Amelia Earhart

This exercise was actually quite fun and wish as a class we could of spent more time on this exercise. I have actually downloaded several photo shop applications and tried to learn on my own but there is just way to much to learn and I really did not have the patient to sit and learn everything through books and websites!

The exercise was fairly simple to follow both through Amy's instructions and by reading the instructions through the book. First we had to crop the girls head out of the picture, which I feel bad about! Then we had to crop out a piece of the flag and replace the ladies head. Once we got that, we had to use the clone tool to blend the part of the flag with the rest. This tool was actually pretty cool and fun to use. Grabbing bits of pieces through out the flag and placing them with the new one. I think I did a pretty fare job if I say so myself.

The next thing we had to do was to open a picture of Amelia Earhart and crop her head and place it in the original picture with the other women. Once Earhart head was placed in the picture we had to turn the picture black and white. Once the picture was made into black and white I had to use the burn tool to make Earhart's black and white picture blend in with the original black and white picture.

Like I said earlier in the post, I wish we spent more time using photo shop in this way, imposing images onto others. Maybe we could make some pictures have subliminal messages or images in the picture.

Recommendation for next semester maybe use photo shop and attempt to create your own subliminal message within the image. I think that would be a fun project. For critiques you can have each student hold their poster up and have class mates guess at the message and the person with the board can give clues.

Just a suggestion... take it or leave?! :-)

Travers Collins

A few years ago I was asked to be apart of a focus group for Travers Collins which is located on Exchange street down town Buffalo. My roommate who actually works for the company asked me to help them pick a design for billboards for the advertisement for the Buffalo Police Department entry exam. When I arrived to Travers Collins I was introduce to the product manager and other individuals that have been working on the project. I was offered some refreshments, Pizza and wings and soda, yummy!!


I was sat in a room with four or five other individuals that were there to help with the selection. We were shown six different ideas they came up with. All six ideas were presented to us and I really did not know what to think about it at first. I remember some were really busy and others were really simple. I remember one were it was busy were they had the lights and people in the back ground and a yellow caution tape in the front, but instead of the yellow tape reading caution it said something about signing up for the Buffalo Police exam which was coming up shortly. There was another similar one like that but without the busy back ground and just the yellow tape. A couple of the posters played with words, such as the Miranda rights. I believed it said "You have the right to make a difference... take the Buffalo exam" something along those lines. I actually didn't know it was playing on words with the Miranda rights "You have the right to remain silent..." till one of the project managers brought it to our attention.


They also asked us what we thought about the images, how it was presented, if the message was getting across, if the poster would grab my attention. They also asked about faces, names and what not being present on the poster.

I believe they choose only two of the posters that were presented to me to be placed on billboards around Buffalo. One was with two officers faces and a badge telling them to sign up and that they can make a difference and the other one was with blue back ground and the yellow caution tape saying to sign up for the exam.

Now that I think about it, some of the designs that my class mates came up with for our posters were as good if not better then some of the designs that were shown to me that day.

Milton Glaser

If you were to ask me "Who is Milton Glaser" in the beginning of this semester I would say "I have no clue". If you were to show me four different pictures of Milton Glaser and ask me to pick one out I would say the same thing. Even though I have seen his work plenty of times, I would not know who he is. To be honest with you the "I love NY" seems so simple that I thought some hobo off the streets of NYC came up with and it just caught on with everyone! Even with his Dylan poster I never knew that Glaser was the one that was responsible for that and I consider myself a big Bob Dylan fan!



One thing that I find really fascinating with Glaser is that when he was approached to fix NY and make an iconic poster he was not given tons of money. (From what I understand from the documentary that we watched on him in class) I could of heard wrong? In the short film we were able to see inside his building and how he works. It amazes me that after all the work he has done and I'm assuming all the money he has made from his work that he is still in the same building working closely with others not thinking he is some hot shot!

Another thing that I like about Glaser is his little sign that says who is in the building.

It is very sleek and looks like a sky scraper with the letters representing windows!


Now every time I see one of Milton Glaser work and I am with friends I also act like I know everything about graphic designs asking them if they know who designed that poster and what other famous posters he has came up with!



My favorite would obviously be the Bob Dylan poster. With the black as the background for the face and the his hair being so colorful!! And the block letters he used for Dylan as well works very well as a whole! Like I said earlier with the "I love NY" design, it looks so simple that a drifter in the streets of NY came up with. The idea is not complicated and it seems like something that a elementary kid would come up with. Maybe that's why it is so catchy and popular!!

Project 4: Critiquing

I was really impressed with every ones projects. Even though none of us are professional graphic designers or get paid for the work we do, I definitely think that the posters were professionally done. I think everyone bought a different aspect of what we have learned so far through out the class. The ideas that were made I could tell reflected some of my classmates personality's.

During our critiques as a class, I am very surprised to hear so many of my class mates speak up and give their opinions whether it be good or bad or just saying that they like it. Some of the opinions I do agree with and very few that I don't agree with. It is going to be very interesting to see what people say about my brochure since it has to do with tattoos and what not.

Like I said in my earlier post about my project that I was not very pleased with it. I had a chance to ask a couple of my class mates what they thought and they said they liked it a lot. I'm not sure if they were being honest or being nice, but whatever reason it was it made me feel better about my poster. While I was up there I didn't get much criticism which could be a good or bad thing. I will take it as a positive thing!!

All in all I think the class as a whole did an outstanding job on their posters. I am sure if they had a little more time and a little more experience there design can be seen by their peers and the whole world.

I am actually pretty excited to see what my class mates have for our final project. I want to see how everyone used what we learned all year to incorporate into our brochure. Every time we go into a critique I expect to see some above average projects but there has always been two or three that really grabbed my attention and say wow, good job. I may not say it verbally but I am thinking it and I hope I am able to see some cool designs for the brochures.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass is arguably one of the most famous graphic designer in US history. Even though he might not be a house hold name such as movie stars or famous athletes, but Bass has left his mark in history. We see his work day in and day out, whether it is riding the bus, buying groceries or waiting in the airport. Bass was many of things in his lifetime, a graphic designer, title designer and a film director.

In Bass early life, he graduated from James Monroe high school in the Bronx and studied part time at the Art Students League in Manhattan. Bass began in his time in Hollywood in the early 1940's doing print work for film ads.

Throughout Bass film industry he has worked on many movies. Bass first movie he had done some kind of part is in 1954 film Cameron Jones to his last in 1995 with Casino. In total of 49 different films. Probably his most famous is Vertigo and Psycho. Bass worked with some of the biggest filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. And besides the posters, which would be the first thing that you would think of as a graphic designer’s job, he was also in charge of the title sequence and the credits and he for each project he was able to create something extraordinary with these most simple means like I said earlier.

Saul Bass is an American graphic designer and a academy award winning filmmaker. Bass was born May 8, 1920 in New York City and passed April 25, 1996 in Los Angeles. During his 40 year career Bass has worked on many Hollywood movies and title. Not only did he work in the film industry and making titles and poster but he also had his hand dipped in major markets in the retail industry. He has worked on many logos through out the US. Just to name some a few, General Foods, United airways Quaker oats and Dixie.





Bass has also showed us how versatile graphic designer can be.

News Gothic

News Gothic is probably most famous for appearing in the opening and closing credits of Star Wars!! I actually stumbled upon this when I was googling what to write about.

News Gothic is a realist sans serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released by American type founders (ATF) in 1908.

   


There are a few distinctive characteristics of News Gothic that stick outs from other type  face. There are the two story lowercase a and the g. Also unique are the blunt terminus at the apex of the lowercase t and the location of the tail of the uppercase Q completely outside the bowl.




Some of the places that you do see News Gothic or other versions of News Gothic is the Brooklyn Academy of Music which was designed by Michael Beirut. The font is also found on Otil Elevator push buttons which was manufactured from the 1920s through the 1960's. News Gothic is also used in Nature Magazine, art work by Lady Gaga which is called "The Fame Monster". who would of thought Lady Gaga would use a font named News Gothic! And of course the most famous that News Gothic was used is the opening credits for Star Wars!!

There is a enhanced version of News Gothic which is called News Gothic No. 2. This face type differs from News Gothic by adds more weights. Some other variants from News goth is Benton Sans which is an expanded font family from the Font Bureau. Linotype Gothic, which was based on Heidelber Gothic is a variant with italic type glyphs. A Cyrillic version was developed for Para Type in 2005 by Kmitry Kirsanov, based on Bitstream's version of News Gothic.

So overall News Gothic was some what popular when it first came out. It has had some stints in major retail company such as JC Penny advertisements and popular pop artist such as Lady Gaga using it in her art work. Movies and elevators also got on board with using this font.

Other then the information I was able to find on Wikipedia I was not able to find much more information.