• Home
• Blog
• Portfolio
• Contact

“Bendy” Logos, Consistent Branding – Google

Posted 15 Nov 2009 - 2 Gratefully received comments

Have you ever worked for a client that confused their logo with their brand?
When this happens the client usually provides a huge booklet of “branding guidelines” that details exactly how their logo should be used, specifying sizes, positioning and colours. These guidelines are given to you to keep their brand identity consistent. There is nothing wrong with this for most companies/organisations, but sometimes it all goes too far.
Occasionally a company can be so obsessed with the rigidity of their logo that they confuse it with their overall brand. A logo alone doesn’t make a complete brand identity.

A classic example of a fluid logo that holds true to it’s overall brand identity is Google.
I’ve collected a selection of the special/seasonal logos that Google have made for their search page over the last year. I’ve selected some because they are clever and others because they are beautiful. No matter how far removed they are from the original logo, they all scream ‘Google’.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with it, but for comparison purposes, here is the standard Google logo:

Continue Reading

- leave a comment!  

Generation A – Book Review #3

Posted 18 Sep 2009 - No Comments - leave yours now!

Some books seem to transcend their subject matter; they have deeper meanings than it appears at first glance. I’ve always found this to be the case when reading Douglas Coupland novels, and that is part of the reason why I believe I can label his books as inspirational.

In many ways Coupland’s books are unrelated to Graphic design but in a lot of other ways they are related to everything.
I’ve been thinking of writing a review of Coupland’s career as a writer as a source of inspiration for a while. I started his latest novel this week, which made my mind up.

Generation A, by Douglas Coupland

Continue Reading

- leave a comment!  

Arkham Asylum – Book Review #2

Posted 22 Aug 2009 - No Comments - leave yours now!

This is my second book review, I try to highlight books that have stuck with me for years and have inspired and delighted me countless times.
Some of the best sources of inspiration are the most unexpected. The book I’m writing about is in fact a comic book, some people might call it a graphic novel, but I’ve always balked at that label. It has always felt like an attempt to make comics sound more literary, when there is no need to do that at all. There is as much variety and depth in comic books as there is in novels or movies. Some are light and fun, others are literary and serious.
This comic is dark, brooding and heavy.

Arkham Asylum, Written by: Grant Morrison, Artwork by: Dave McKean. Publisher: DC Comics, publication date: 1989.

Continue Reading

- leave a comment!  

A Smile in the Mind – Book Review #1

Posted 03 Jul 2009 - 6 Gratefully received comments

I find great pleasure in the written word. Great books can become firm friends for the rest of your life. Just like your real lifelong friends, they can entertain you, teach you and at times comfort you.

Professionally speaking, there is also a small group of books that help me more than most. There are those fantastic books that inspire.

My oldest friend is: A smile in the Mind: Witty thinking in Graphic Design, by Beryl McAlhone & David Stuart.

Continue Reading

- leave a comment!  

Design Forums

Posted 14 Jun 2009 - 2 Gratefully received comments

A big part of design and any creative job is the generation of ideas and then developing them through showing others for their thoughts and criticism.
In the past I have fallen in the trap of seclusion. I’ve mostly worked in small companies where I have been the only “creative,” so the back and forth of a design crit can become stilted and difficult, especially if you are showing concepts to the same people day in day out.
In this situation, I realised I might fall into the trap of thinking my initial ideas might not have to be pushed further, or I ‘d pushed them as far as I could. However, I saw the danger in this and decided I needed to find other people that might be in a similar situation to me, or at least be open to discuss their own work. I believed without this kind of interaction I would begin to find the whole design process more of a struggle than it needed to be.
This was all particularly pertinent as I was developing my new identity and website concepts at the time. Like many other designers I’ve always found doing self-promotional work to be very difficult, so some outside input would be critical if I was to produce a solution that I could be proud of.

With these thoughts flickering in my mind I stumbled across Design Forums. After a little bit of lurking trying to figure out if his was the place I was looking for, I decided to register and get stuck in. After a while I discovered that it was exactly what I needed.

Continue Reading

- leave a comment!  

© Ken Reynolds Design