Bill Gardener‘s Logo Lounge should be on the daily destination list of all logo designers and is a great site for logo design news, views and a massive catalog of user uploaded symbols, logos and icons. Added bonus is that uploaded work automatically becomes eligible for inclusion in the ongoing Logo Lounge book series published by Rockport. The $100 (per year) membership fee may be a bit steep for some, but as the site’s about us page tells us, it’s probably a worthwhile investment for the professional logo designer:

“For $100 per year, you can upload as many logos as you like, as well as search through thousands of logos submitted from designers around the world, from the most famous to the up-and-coming.
Your work is automatically entered into consideration for upcoming LogoLounge books and is simultaneiously visible to the entire international LogoLounge community. Become an integral part of the largest collective of logo and identity designers in the world.”

Logo Lounge

David Airey‘s Logo Design Love is a great site for designers of all stripes, especially those who specialize in logos. Bite sized news pieces buttressed with very active comments sections make for a lively read, while the site doles up examples of logo design, opinion and other design goodies. Definitely worth a looksee if you’re into branding, logos and graphic design.

Logo Design Love

Interbrand has released its list of the ‘Top Ranked Brands of 2011′ and it certainly makes for an interesting read. At the top of the heap we find Coca-Cola with an astounding brand worth of $71B. Interbrand describes the Coke brand as follows:

“The Coca-Cola brand remains timeless yet relevant as it celebrates its 125th anniversary. The company lives and its brand, and the overall equity of happiness comes through at every touchpoint. It continues to receive enormous exposure through top-tier sponsorships with popular events like the FIFA World Cup. Additionally, Coca-Cola ties itself closely with meaningful promotions relating to disaster relief, youth empowerment, and sustainability issues around the globe. This past year also saw the wide rollout of its PlantBottle™, a sustainable and recyclable bottle made partially of plant material, which included Heinz adopting the technology for use with ketchup bottles (which featured “talking labels” asking “Guess what my bottle is made of?”). As soft drinks are a relatively stable market, Coca-Cola’s brand value moves accordingly. Per company reports, consumers worldwide choose to refresh themselves with Coca-Cola products “at a rate of over 1.7 billion servings each and every day.” That’s a lot of Coke.”

The list also represents a look at the top brand logos, all of which feature fairly simple text and iconic designs. Not one cartoon logo in the bunch.

Top ranked brands of 2011

Design Festival takes a look at five key elements to consider when designing a logo. Great little article that sums up things nicely:

“Choosing the right logo is not as easy as it may seem. You may come up with something cute and snazzy that says nothing to the audience you are trying to target. Or you could have a logo that looks astounding up on that billboard but dull and uninspiring when you place it in a newspaper ad. There are many factors you need to consider and many pitfalls you need to avoid.”

Five elements for reaching your target audience

Logopond is a great resource for logo design inspiration and features oodles of designers and galleries of their work. You can view all sorts of logos in many categories, and if you’re a logo designer, feel free to jump in and upload your own designs – registration is free. Members critique featured designs in the comment threads so you may want to gussy up that thick skin (and polish up your work) before participating.

Logopond

If there’s one thing that inflames passion in the design community, it is spec (speculative) work – that is designing something in the hopes of getting paid rather than with a contract from the client. Over the years the definition has been conflated into ‘crowdsourcing’, design contests and what have you, to the point where many designers can’t define what the passion is all about. Bold Perspective blog has perhaps the best definition of spec work as it currently stands, and what the difference between spec work, pro bono and open source actually is, especially as it pertains to the value of same.

Pro Bono:
Professional work (i.e. design) is inherently valuable and can be donated as something that is of worth.

(Open source) contributing to the community:
Professional work (i.e. design) is inherently valuable and can be given to a community as something of worth that benefits the community.

Spec Work:
Professional work (i.e. design) is only valuable if it is “liked” or “chosen” by a contest holder.

Read more

Many of you will be familiar with Brandstack. If you’re not, the concept of Brandstack goes something like what follows – designers were able to upload pre-fab logo designs to the Brandstack ‘marketplace’ (along with available domains in many cases) and sell these ‘brands in a box’ to businesses who wanted them. Brandstack also features a ‘custom’ segment to their marketplace where clients could work with teams of designers on custom artwork. Started up three years ago, the company had its ups-and-downs with some reports of payments to designers (the clients paid up-front and the funds, less a Brandstack commission were passed on to the designer) being delayed, if not neglected altogether. Now, Brandstack has announced that they’re closing up shop completely, with a message on their home page that tells a tale of internet fraud crippling the company. Sad to see this really as I’m never one to take glee in another company’s demise (taking a ‘there but the grace of God go I” position) and due to the fact that many designers have been left out in the cold when it comes to payment for their already-sold logos. Sayeth the closing-up announcement:

“As many of you know, there is some unfinished business that won’t be taken care of. Many designers put their faith in Brandstack and were left short.”

Whether this shut-down is a result of internet fraud, or a softening of the online logo design business in total remains to be seen. It is interesting to note that HP online logo design company Logoworks recently posted a similar notice on their home page, announcing that they were closing down too.

Nifty little video that traces the automobile company’s logo back to its World War One roots.

For just $495, the page on 99designs breathlessly exclaims, Mick7294 “has received 84 design concepts from 27 designers!” Despite having to remove 5 submission for “submitting unoriginal work,” Mick7294 was able to choose his winning design (above). Trouble is, the winning design looks awfully similar to a shark logo designed by Christian Dunn and published on his Dribble feed.

Standard “it’s an isolated incident” and “we’ll suspend or ban the designer” disclaimers in 3…2…1

Figuring that most lake logos are “fairly ugly,” Creative Director Nicol Meyer has set herelf a rather herculean task – branding 10,000 Minnesota lakes with their own individual logos. Continuing at a pace of one logo per day, the Branding 10,000 Lakes project will take Meyer just over 27 years to complete.