OUGD504 / STUDIO BRIEF 02 / RESEARCH

After gaining pointers from the client I went onto researching generic existing effective logos. 

The underground logo is iconic for it's bold blue and red colour scheme, distinct basic shapes & clean sans serif type. When you see this logo, you instantly relate it to travelling in London, especially if you live in the UK however I'd say it would be mostly recognised on a global scale. I find it interesting that although this logo is so iconic, I found that it has no actual meaning behind it, rather just a combination of well designed shapes and colours that became a power symbol for London's underground transport.

This logo is for a bistro in Strasbourg, France. It uses prominent, bold type alongside a quite detailed illustration of an axe. Although I feel it is important to keep a logo quite simplistic, I still think this is a really effective logo design as it keeps a professional aesthetic through the type and printing methods (foiling). This logo could also be versatile as the type could work without the axe and also the axe could even be used on it's own. 

This is one of my favourite band logos, for a band called Ghost B.C. The archaic style of type especially fits with their band aesthetic. They're a Swedish heavy metal band who are easily recognisable because of their on stage presence and outfits; they clearly express a anti-religious disposition (as the main vocalist is wearing a crazy pope outfit). The logo is very gothic and clearly displays an upside down cross by lowering the cross bar on the letter T. It also appears 3D, clearly to give emphasis and depth. 

This logo efficiently utilises negative space by using the name of the company to form the skull's face, the B and the D being the eyes and the A the nose. I love this logo as it's clearly very effective and cleverly designed. I feel as though it may be more effective if they had considered a different colour choice, for example bone white, as I'm uncertain why the designer felt yellow was the most appropriate selection. The shapes used are not complicated at all as you can still clearly see that it's a skull. It's important to consider intricate shapes when designing a logo as you need to think about how it will look on a small scale. Will you still be able to tell what it is? It would have also been useful to find the website to add some background to the logo however I couldn't find a link.

This logo is for a house plant company, which is pretty self explanatory from the text. I love the simplicity involved with this logo and the choice of one solid colour, earth green, which is clearly related to plants and the environment. The type is also circled around the plant vector, resembling the planet, or even the recycling logo because of the colour as well. Overall this is a beautiful logo however it could work just as effectively with a bit less text. 

I then began to research into fashion branding in particular.

Probably one of the most iconic fashion brands is Chanel. Chanel is known for being high end, expensive and luxurious. The two crossing C's, for Coco Chanel, are known world wide. This is such a simple concept, two letters interlocking, however I have never thought to find out the origin and why one C is backwards. 

From a google search, I found that the C's originate from a stained glass window in the Chapel in Aubazine.