NOW That's What I Call a Logo!

I watched a documentary the other night about the development of Virgin Records, and the "NOW That's What I Call Music" compilation albums. I've personally never known a time when these CD's haven't been around; and when I seen the graphics for the first few records I was shocked. The reason I was shocked was because the logo they used for a few of the records is sooo much cooler than the crap they use now. But why is it crap? Because there's no feeling behind it, there's no personality. It's just 3D rendered button pushing crap.

So, I done some research, and found that my favourite of all the records was number 9 (above). The simplicity of it is great, the comparison between this and a more recent one (also above) is laughable. I spent an hour or so re-rendering this original logo, and I'm convinced it still looks better.

When it comes to logo's nowadays, lots of big companies are switching to more simplistic and sophisticated logos (a great example is ITV), and for good reason: It's just better. It has character. 3D often looks tacky.

Supporting Poster (Part 2)

Here are a couple of alternatives, the one with inverted colour is the most interesting, I especially like the look of the mountain in that colour scheme. The white smoke leaving the rectangles is also a nice effect. The top image is just an earlier version with less elements, and the one below is the cross like shape I created, to represent the cross for Switzerland.

Swiss Typeface

I've mentioned that as part of my final major project I'm creating Typefaces. Well this here is one created with the intention of it being Swiss through and throughout. But not by traditional standards, when we think of Swiss Style Typefaces, we think of the classics like Helvetica, Avenir, Frutiger and so on; but this here is embodying a different sense of Swiss. I decided to pair each character with a matching photograph that represented Switzerland in it's own way, a lot of them being mountainous Alpine scenery. That's what actually gave me the idea in the first place. The first two characters I created were A & M, if you look again you'll notice the M is just a doubled-up version; both of these characters already have a mountainous quality to them, so I had the idea to add a photograph over the top to emphasise the shape of the character.

Overall I think it's worked it okay, I like the whole concept and idea, it gives it a whole ironic and literal context. To be honest though, it was difficult to find pictures suitable for some of the less obvious ones. For example, a lot are simply places in Switzerland e.g. Zurich, Geneva etc. The Typeface I used for "The Real Swiss Typeface" is Avenir, not just because I like it, but because it's neutral enough to add the exact juxtaposition I was looking for; literal vs actual Swiss Style Typeface.

Personal Branding

I've had a jab a personal branding today, it's turned out alright I guess. But, there's only so much you can do with Photoshop, so I think I'll try and get that stamp laser cut. Then I can do it for real, and I think I could look quite good, for business cards and other promotion material.

The Typefaces I've used are Caviar Dreams for my initials and Futura for the other, I think they work really well together and I'll remember this pairing for future projects.