Tuesday, 4 May 2010

Logos and Rough Logo Design

Logos used by other similar charities



This is the logo used by the charity WarChild, which is the most similar charity to mine with almost matching causes. In my opinion this logo is very suitable for a charity of this kind as it is simple and prominent, using bold plain colours to make the logo stand out. I think the best part of the logo is the contrast within the fonts and also the wording. For a start the word war is presented in capitals very bold and pretty much filling the box within it is in. In starking difference the word child connates immediately to the audience to quite an innocent and small writing of a child, this conveys the message that the child is intimidated by the word war which in turn works perfectly for the charity making it an effective logo.




This is the logo for the Help for Hereos charity which is another that I haven chosen as a charity that is similar to mine. Despite its obvious difference to that of the WarChild logo this logo again instantly struck me as and inticing and effective masthead for a charity of this type. Making it different to that of the other logo they have used an image aswell as text to create this logo's overall effect. I feel in this logo the image used of the to soldiers helping the other fallen soldier is symbolic of what the charity is about and connotates to the fact that you will be helping in a less hands on and direct way when donating to the charity. Aswell as this the text is also very important in making the logo what it is, in this case they use the same font to convey a different message using 'help' and 'heroes' in bold capitals to emphasise your part in donating to them and also that they are hereos and deserve to be treat in the correct manner with help for such things as ex soldiers amputees etc. Overall giving the message that the people whom the donaters money will go it is towards a worth while and deserving case.

What makes a good logo (reference to Duncan McAdams article)

According to the article by Duncan Adams the following points are vital in making a logo effective and in the most basic of terms good.

1.
'A good logo is easy to read and comprehend', this basically means it is easily understandable to all sections of the target audience without fail therefore for example the font must be readable and any images must be obvious to the audience what they are and without enigma like qualities.

2.
'A good logo is well co-ordinated', in simple terms this basically means that a logo should be well rounded and memorable. In order to achieve this it must be fairly smart for example without lines going all over the place, and also should in include a slogan that is specific to the company or in this case charity. This would need to be very easy to remember and instantly make people think of your organisation should they hear or think of it.

3.
'A good logo can be adapted for use across all media effectively and remain distinct and recognizable', again this is fairly straight forward in meaning that a good logo must be fairly universal and easily applied to things from lorries to badges while maintaining its originality and its personality. Therefore making people who see it recognise it straight away, this also means that it cannot be to articulate so it cannot be easily replicated by the company for different display purposes and on the other hand it can't be so simple it gets lost.

4.
'A good logo utilizes a simple font that is easy to read and duplicate.' Following on from the point above a logo should be easy to duplicate while also making the the font work effectively, as stated in the article should this font be successful people will start to associate it with your establishment.

5.
'As a general rule, two colours is enough for your logo.' As well as keeping the logo simple and smart the issue of finance comes in to play should a logo carry a range of colours, this is because if it was to be produced on a large scale it could weight down the company.

6.
'Rectangular shapes work best, because our eyes find it easier to look at rectangles than squares.' This point is purely from a psychological point of view as humans we adapt better to looking at rectangles and squares and also they are better fitted to a TV or a computer screen.

7.
'Don't go changin'!' this seems a fairly obvious one but when it comes to logos if a company changes it either often or drastically it starts to loose its personal and steriotypical stance towards the company of its origin and looses its identity which is very unproductive.

Overall I think Duncan McAdams arcticle and points are quite precise and correct in a sense that they cover all the bases or making a basic logo work, which in turn keeps it simple and in most cases this is all a logo should be.


>Rough logo designs

In my planning stage I drew up 4 different logos that I thought would be suitable for my charity website as its logo and masthead.

These were my first two logos in which i tried to bring the innocent child theme into it with the hands and the feet symbolising non conflict, and connotating to children.


With my next two logos I tried to bring the war theme to the table a bit more, by using the tanks and grenades, and using inspiration from my previous study of the charity WarChild I tried to make the 'orphan' text within the logo quite innocent and childlike which contrasted from the rest of the logo, getting the theme across.

In the end I chose to use this logo:


Which I eventually developed through Paintshop into this :

I felt this was the best choice of logo as it ticked most od Duncan McAdams boxes for a good logo, in that it was simple and easy to reproduce, it was within a rectangle which in turn is considered the best choice for a logo and also the fact the font complimented the image in making the logo work well.

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