Branding: Where Graphic Design Meets Marketing

While all designers would love it if the pursuit of design could be for purely artistic purposes, well, we all have to pay the rent somehow. So applying design to commercial pursuits — specifically branding — is an excellent place where artistic pursuits and commercial application come together.
One example of applying design principles to branding is with Avivo. Denis Olenik was the lead designer, and he has graciously provided us a snapshot of his process in developing a brand from scratch. As you read through this article, notice how Denis uses various tools, design definitions, and fundamental design concepts — like repetition — to build a beautiful brand portfolio for Avivo.
Also, be sure to check out the impressive corporate identity collections at the end of this post to gather inspiration for your own brand projects.

Designing the logo

Of course, one of the keys to a successful brand will always be a logo. Notice how designing the company name and logo went hand in hand. Careful application of scale was applied and the result is a well-​​balanced look and feel.

Typography

Another key to a successful brand is careful and consistent use of typography. If at all possible, the font selection should be used throughout all mediums, unless mixing it up is appropriate.
Note how the typographical selection by Denis ties so well into the company name. Of equal importance is the fact that the font face has been defined and documented. This level of due diligence is necessary for a complete brand portfolio.

Color selection and definition

Denis then moves to color selection and definition. You can see the carefully selected palettes to be used in the first image below. Next, the colors are defined in CMYK, RGB, and Pantone colors. Finally, the colors are applied and defined, giving the company multiple but consistent options.

Application of the brand

Finally, we get to see the brand applied to some real world marketing collateral. Note how the brand works well in multiple media and formats, from business cards to smart phones.

More Corporate Identity Collections

The following are a collection of some corporate identity projects designed by some incredibly talented designers. Take a look, gather some inspiration, and use your newly refreshed creative juices to create some amazing designs!

Cocoro New York by Mark Brooks

This hair salon certainly has a “New York” look and feel with the right style and colors of brand.

Nonea by ChevyChase

The typography matches the graphics for this brand perfectly.

Eat by Ptarmak

The images within the negative space of this company’s logo is brilliant!

Cultivate by Thisisroot

Root developed the look for this design and build agency for environments by pushing Play-​​Doh through a stencil.

Luciano Moto by Undesign​.it

The brand for this motorbike showroom in Europe beautifully portrays the feel of racing motorbikes with a bold font full of forward motion, yellow background, racing stripes, and tire marks.



Cow branding image by Steve Corey.

Surviving logo design in the real world: Designing for Applying

Most of the time as a designer, you will walk around with your logo radar on and find some intriguing logos — some very nice and some not so nice. On a rare occasion, you will see a really beautiful logo that is just not quite right. Could it be incorrectly applied or was it missing an intrinsic methodology during the design phase that limits the application potential?
Designers should be thinking of how a potential design can be applied before inking any pencilled thumbnails. Designing with some self imposed guidelines to accomodate a standard set of applications or designing a set of logo elements (to be used together and separately) will increase the potential effectiveness of a logo in any given application situation.
Applications are so easliy overlooked by the busy designer that sometimes, it can be too late to further ‘massage’ the design — and the logo is applied to a difficult or even unworkable situation.

Ebony Quill Logo

Recently my logo-​​radar picked up the logo of a food store called Ebony Quill. The logo is really beautiful and incredibly decorative. Plenty of effort seems to have gone into the capturing of the essence of what the owner of the cafe/​restaurant wants to convey.

Not knowing much about this logo and just seeing it (standing to the left hand side of the store) the logo looks really great. However, the effectivness of applying the logo in the circular signage (on the opposite side of the store) shows a limit of versatility.

There is potential for developing a simplified version of the logo which would increase the number of effective applications. We don’t know if a simplified version of the logo was ever done, or if this was mis-​​applied by accident. We can only judge what we see.

The Manningham Medical Center Logo

The Manningham Medical Center have used this logo (or a very similar version of it) for many years.
However, early on, the logo included the wordmark title on a single line and it seems that it was delivered as a whole logo with wordmark built in. This made any potential street signage difficult and an early attempt at applying it as signage was removed quite some time back. The logo on the website has had some tweaking (by dropping the words “Medical Centre” down a line) which increases the number of potential applications of the logo — this could now potentially be used for large street signage.
However, as a shape, the symbol is still quite tall, which may cause limitations for other applications. A possible solution is to take the wordmark and put it in three lines on the right and increase the font. This would change the aspect ratio of the whole logo, allow the decrease in size of the symbol and increase the number of applications for it.

Stand out logos

Both the above are two stand out logo examples of how lush, complex and beautiful a logo can be. However, before designing logos such as these, the scope of logo application might have been more strongly considered. These logos are sucessful in so many ways, but the for varying reasons due to shape and layout, the number of applications are either limited or have been made more difficult.

Applications to be considered

Let’s look at some basic applications that should be considered when thumbnailing.

• Letterhead
• Businesscard
• DL Envelope
• Product label
• Product Ticket
• Signage

This is a very basic list of applications that most designers have produced and as you know, some applications could be really big and some really small. If we look to some standards for the biggest and smallest applications, we could be applying the logo as small as 15mm h x 20mm w for a business card, to maybe as big as at 300mm w x 400mm h (or as big as the whole board!) for an A-​​frame footpath sign. These are very basic examples and of course, the sizes could easily vary in the aforementioned applications.
If using a workmark based logo, it is a heavy consideration to ensure readability at a long distance as well as legibility at the very small. Signs are there for a customer to find you. If they cannot recognise your logo or name, the logo has limited its duties in one of its applications. When a logo is being used at a small size such as a business card and the logo is too fine and too hard to read due to printing issues, its mission is to convey the meaning and feeling to the user might be hampered.
Even if your brief does not include listed applications, or the client does not yet know what applications a logo might be used for, ensure that you design with at least a standard set of logos in mind, and that the logo is still clean, clear and recognisable in its large and small forms.

Showcase of Logo Designs from 20 Inspiring Designers

Logo design is its own form of art. Designers must integrate branded colors, shapes, and even words into a logo all the while balancing minimalist designs that can be use on the web or on billboards. It’s certainly a challenge.
This collection of logos represent a fresh batch of up and coming designers who have come up with some noteworthy concepts. Whether it’s a simple stroke of a pen, a full-​​color design, or the creative merging of a visual concept — the following designs are sure to be an inspiration to anyone taking notice.

Synthesis Center by Sophia Georgopoulou

Linchpin by Michael Chevalier

Reyven Spirits by Joseph Daniel

Atomic Vibe by Jon Stapp

48 Arizona Women by Martina Bourque

Concordia by Alberto Aimo

Where Jew At by Gabrielle Heitler

Sherpa Marketing by Jaime Campbell

The Printing Bar T Shirt Printing by Jared Fullinfaw

Hedgie Innovative Solutions by Simon Miklavčič

Cloudio by Splashter

Heartfelt Music Academy by Jose Suaste

AI Group by Paul Liao

4^th Leaf Design Studio by Amy McNeil

FortyFive Creative by Jeff Nissen

Captured in Frames by Emily Kirkpatrick

Equus by Zrinka

Choose Love by Keith Kitz

Tiny Pants by Damian Dominguez

So which designs jump out to you? Any favorites in the batch?

20 Logo Designs Featuring Animal Symbols

Logo designs can be loosely broken into three categories: text only, text and symbols, or symbol only. This post is a showcase of logos which fall into categories two and three, with the symbols in question being animals.
So without further ado, for your viewing pleasure and design inspiration here are some little known and some well known animal logo designs.
Canaritos

Elephruit

A frizzy cat for Gatto Picante

The Wolf

Insomnia Land3

A unicorn is a kind of animal…

Wild Serbia

Sullivan Accounting

El Raco

Famous Logos
Here are a few more animal logos that many of us are fairly familiar with.
Puma

Not entirely unlike the Puma logo, is the Jaguar logo which has gone through some subtle changes over the years.

Another car manufacturer, the famous prancing horse of Ferrari. My next car.

Firefox

“Wax before you ride” with Turtlewax.

The HMV logo with Nipper the dog today, and how it all began.

The Laughing Cow with nice cheese earrings.

The Playboy bunny created by Art Paul.

The Qantas logo featuring a kangaroo has been around in one form or another since 1944 and was redesigned in 2007 by Hulsbosch.

And finally one of my all time favorite logos, the beautiful World Wildlife Fund with the giant panda.

I have undoubtedly missed out on plenty of famous animal symbol logos, so feel free to add to the list. Have you seen any nice new logos featuring animals recently?