The month of March will be dedicated to Dutch design in the city of Madrid, Spain. The Dutch embassy is working with the city producing the event which is the first of it’s kind at this scale, being held in Madrid. Readings and exhibits will be held around the city during the month. For more info (en Español) check out HOLAMAD.COM.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY will be hosting an exhibit entitled Design and the Elastic Mind. The exhibit will host a variety of works on different mediums put together by designers, engineers and scientists from around the world which will feature objects that are microscopic to gigantic sized. The exhibit opens on February 24th and will run until May 12. Go to the site linked above for more information.
With the ’08 election slowly approaching there are several ways design plays a part in who will be come our president, from campaign sign and logo design to the actual ballots that you’re voting on, graphics play a large part in the election too. Some people think Florida’s ballots, which were were poorly designed in the ’04 election were the direct cause of the chaos. Specifically many believe it was hard to tell who you were voting for, while most Floridians stated they meant to vote for Gore, we all know the outcome of that. Obey Giant founder Sheppard Fairy has even got into this with his Obama poster shown above.
There is also a whole organization whose whole mission is to make the voting experience much clearer for everyone involved. For more information check out Design for Democracy.
Three students from Cambrian College in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada have launched their own magazine entitled Soap+Water. The magazine will focus on new design talent in their local area, which is often overlooked for Toronto. They’re currently distributing 500 copies of the magazine, though they hope with the second installment they’ll double that number as well as the size of the magazine. For more information go to http://www.soapandwater.org/.
The test of a good logo simply rests on does it work. Does it work for the company? Does it work for customers? There isn’t a simple way to measure how effective a logo is. But what a logo design does do is convey to anybody looking at it, about the meaning of the company.
To look at a sample of logo designs from both big and small companies, you will find that there are thousands of different looks and some simple, some very complex. A great logo that I like is from the very hip clothing company of Marc Ecko Enterprises. This logo is of a Rhino surrounded by a red square. It is a very strong logo and mark for his company. This logo not only changed his company, but it catapulted it to significant growth and much higher levels of sales.
This company wen’t through a few different custom logos or marks to get to this end result. So understand that it is a work in progress, and if you really care about your business, give extra care to getting the right logo design.
If you are looking to start off right, make certain that your graphics and company representation are up to snuff. Don’t try to use a cheap software or free tool to make your logo because it is the face of your company. Just as you wouldn’t want to wear wrinkled clothes to an important meeting or interview, so treat your logo. Make sure that you iron the wrinkles out of your image.
I Heart Graphics 