2012 Olympic logo – [cough cough] fugly [cough cough]

David Airey is not impressed with the new 2012 London Olympic logo that was recently unveiled.

I can’t say I’m awestruck either.

At a rumoured $600,000.00 cost.. maybe dumbstruck is more accurate.

Here We (lo)Go Again!

Here’s another logo contest for those interested in exercising their creative muscles and learning Inkscape at the same time. This one sounds especially interesting and fun too:

From debianArt.org :

Debian Jr. is a Custom Debian Distribution (CDD) project.
Their goal is to make Debian an OS that children of all ages will want to use. Their initial focus will be on producing something for children up to age 8. Once they have accomplished this, their next target age range is 7 to 12. By the time children reach their teens, they should be comfortable with using Debian without any special modifications.

The Debian Jr. needs a logo and all designers are welcome!

Check out the contest’s About Page for all rules and deadline (July 16th).

Update: If you want to incorporate the standard Debian ‘swirl’ in some way, I found a scalable SVG version of it on the debianart.org site right here.

Sketching, Creativity and the Design Process

I’m a big fan of the design process. Almost more than the result itself.

I remember when I first got my hands on the wonderful book Driving Ambition, and I found myself quickly drawn not to the high quality photography, but to Gordon Murray’s initial sketches and the drawings involved in developing various ideas. It’s something that has always fascinated me – how people create the things we see and enjoy. If you’re at all into car design I can’t recommend it enough.

Recently, David Airey had a great post on logo design where he made the point that sketching was a vital ingredient in the design process. He also posted many design options for a project he was involved in.

While reading that post, I was in the midst of posting logo submissions for the Xmms2 graphic contest. And I was, in fact, doodling ideas in a hardcover notebook I keep for jotting down ideas and sketches. So after reading it, I decided that after I was done submitting logos, I’d post up the various doodles and sketches.

Now, I’m far from an accomplished artist, but I had fun generating ideas and transforming them into digital form with Inkscape. Hopefully this will encourage others to post things that illustrate their design process (whatever process that might be). It’s something that I don’t see enough of on the web (if you know where it is, then point me to it). There’s a lot of inspiration in seeing how people create things, even if they’re just pencil sketches on a knapkin.

Here are the various ideas I played around with. You can see a fair number of my xmms2 logo submissions that come directly from these sketches. Others never quite went anywhere….

[click on the image(s) to see larger versions]

Indefatigable?

I've been called a lot of things in my 39 years on this planet, but indefatigable hasn't been one of them – until now. That's what I was called on the XMMS2 Logo contest blog today. While I assumed (correctly) it was a compliment, I am nothing if not honest about the fact that despite what my daughter might think, I do NOT know everything, and that includes the definition of indefatigable.

Did I ever mention that the Google search keyword "define:" is one of my best friends? Well me and the Google define: keyword have been intimate for quite some time.

A quick search yielded "showing sustained enthusiastic action with unflagging vitality". Not bad. Quite nice actually.

While not really wanting to toot my own horn, it is quite remarkable how a single word compliment can raise your day.

Check out the XMMS2 contest blog for the slew of great entries so far.

Develop your Inkscape chops (and maybe win something too!)

Seems like everybody and their grandmother are holding a logo contest these days:

create.freedesktop.org is a project whose aim is to facilitate the sharing of things like code, media and infrastructure between various free and open source creative applications (think Inkscape, GIMP, cinepaint, scribus, Audacity and the like). They're going to be holding a logo competition. It's supposed to start soon. If you're looking to improve your Inkscape skills and stretch your creative muscles at the same time, then have a go when it starts. It'll accomplish both things. The contest is supposed to have started, but I see no confirmed details posted about it yet, but there are some tentative details over in the  openclipart.org wiki.

Xmms2 as you might imagine is a project aimed at providing a followup to the venerable xmms media player application. They're holding a logo competition too. And in this one, they're offering a $400 Amazon Gift Certificate to the winner! This one has already started and entries are being accepted until the 13th of April. Drag your butt over to the Xmms2 Logo Competition page for details.

If you think you haven't got what it takes, I've got a small piece of advice for you:

Just drawing *something*. Anything. Don't go into it as something you have to submit on the first go-round. Once you come up with something, go get a coffee and stare at it for a while. Play with it. Before long you'll see what you like and don't like about it and you'll refine it (or even scrap it). But by that time your creative juices will at least be flowing. You'll then likely see off-shoots or completely different ideas. And even more importantly (IMO) you'll figure out different way of achieving the results you want. All the while, you'll be building your chops bit by bit. What is the worst thing that can happen by trying?

I am absolutely killer at throwing up obstacles to getting unappealing work started. I can be extremely creative in finding ways to avoid scary or potentially daunting tasks.  But if I just summon up the willpower to do something (usually the easiest, shortest portion of the task), I quickly find myself achieving more and more progress. It's getting the boulder rolling that's tough. Once it's going you'll find it's a lot easier to keep it moving.

Cheers and good luck.

Speaking of Logo Design

The Open Font Library logo contest closes tonight. I’ve made a dozen entries (although a few are just reworks and revisions of others). There’s 5 days of judging and then a decision. It was fun coming up with ideas and I learned a good chunk more about Inkscape along the way which is good.

In a related note, in one of my Technorati search feeds, a link to a site called LogoPond.com came up. Man, if you’re looking for inspiration and interested in seeing oodles of high quality creative logo work, check it out. I was blown away and completely humbled at the same time. There are *very* few logos on that site that I didn’t find appealing. It’s amazing how much good colour and design work can influence the quality of a logo. All my contest entries look like absolute $#*% to me now. 😉

One of my favourites (and one of the simplest) is this one for Tidy Tom’s Cleaning Company. Awesome.

Open Font Library – Logos Wanted Baby…

As you may have read on other Inkscape and open-source related blogs, the Open Font Library is holding a contest to come up with a logo. Since the rules require submissions to be in SVG format, Inkscape is generally the tool of choice.

The goal of the Open Font Library project is to: “… collect public domain fonts so that they may be used freely.”

I’ve been having fun coming up with ideas and have submitted four so far. I’ve learned quite a few new things about Inkscape, most notably nodes, curves and what you can do with them. It hasn’t made for anything interesting enough for a screencast, but it’s fun figuring things out. Just like with programming, writing or other creative pursuits, it’s amazing how much you can learn when you’ve got an interesting problem to solve.

There are lots of good entries. Check them out.