The January Free For All

[gare]

I thought a good way to start the new year would be to freshen up your logo. This is not strictly speaking a Free?For?All because there will be no judging, no contest. I'd like to see how everyone signs their work.

Tips:

? A good logo works in black and white (for business cards and stuff) as well as in color. Create a B&W logo first, then choose a color scheme, textures and so on.

? Resist the impulse to create a larger-than-life signature, such as "GDB Industries", which displays a low self-image and usually brands you as a lone designer anyhow. But do indeed get playful--"PixelPaint Inc." tells the audience what your company does in a light, friendly way. BTW, in many states, it's much harder to incorporate than to just register a Doing Business As (DBA). I trademarked a company once, but the paperwork took me away from the business of my business, and eventually reverted to doing business under my own name.

I'll go first. Here's the "history" of my logos. The upper-right "sculpture" never played well as a flat B&W logo.

Ready, set, go!

My Best,

Gare

[gare]

A good photographer avoids lens flare, but a lens flare can be an interesting artifact and also helps disguise a rendered model or photorealistic illustration as being synthetic.

Photoshop has a lens flare filter, but if you've played with it, it's hard to center and it takes two or more tries to get the look you want.

So I illustrated a lens flare in Xara Xtreme (and it does not port well to Illustrator, sorry). I'm offering it up for free; you'll want to play around with the opacity and blending mode of the individual objects.

Have fun!

Gare

[nitrobutler]

Here goes a quickie, it's my initials.
I'm not sure how the gradient would print though.

[gare]

Hi, nitro!

The logo certainly states up front what your services are

To address the possibly thorny gradient problem, why not halftone it for black and white? See below; the halftoning would be a deliberate design element.

BTW, BeesKnees is one of my favorite fonts! Dave Farey designed it in 2000 paying homage to the title screens of Marx Brothers movies.

My Best,

Gare

[gare]

I'd like to open this month's non-competition a littlr further.

How do you sign your work? Forget about small company logos for a moment.

How do you watermark your work to protect it from theft when you post it?

My Best,

Gare

[winterhawke]

I feel that I have something to post that I want to share with the world, well, it's up to anyone who wants it to keep it. If there is a weasel out there who wants to claim it as their own work, I couldn't stop them. But I doubt if anyone would steal my things anyway namely because I've never posted anything \:/ and secondly when I do get to posting, they'll be completed works; RE: ads done and published, pages from various publications etc. If someone still wants to steal them there are copyright laws they may have to contend with, plus, by the time I post them, they'll be old news and will have already have been published and I will have already spent the paycheck. Also, I'm a one man show. Why would I require a logo or mark. Right now my name is what's most important. Besides, as taught in school; a designer should never design their own mark. Way to subjective.
That said, I think I'll go ahead and design some thing [ jfthoi ]

[gare]

Thanks for sharing, winterhawke --

As far as copyrights go, my advice to those who are only now getting into the Web, is if you want to post it, be prepared to give it up. A logo I did once for a wedding music caterer was not only appropriated, but the theif mutilated my work, presumably in an attempt to disguise its origin. The defacement ticked me off more than the thelft. Also, I see that two of my books on Photoshop have been scanned and OCR-ed and are available on UseNets--that doesn't bother me because the books are out of print (I make no royalties) and the info is still good, but I wish they'd post the companion CD's contents as well to make it easier to follow te tutorials.

Generally, I don't sign my artwork, but when I do, it's with a handwritten signature or a logo I've designed myself--subjectivity is relative: on one hand, who knows you better than you and on the other hand I've seen many artist-designed logos that suffer from ego. I think that if you design logos for a living, you're then in a much better position to design on for yourself.

But I always try to make a logo subserviant to the artwork; I'll often use complimentary colors and transparency to tone it down.

Funny how Ralph Lauren et all take pride in putting their name on the backside of wealthy teenagers, though. I think I want a piece of that (the money, not the backside)!

My Best,

Gare

[Shaun]

How do you sign your work?

With a monogram - similar to attached - no background, and using a layer style that suits the picture it's on. So it's obvious but unobtrusive. I "drew" the signature with the mouse in Photoshop.

[gare]

I like it!

Good idea there, putting it on a layerto merge down in a blending mode--unobtrusiveness is key.

Wow, that's quite a feat writing with a mouse. I've rarely tried, mostly because I've been unsuccessful; the mouse is an input device and not a pencil. The more so, I mouse right-handed but I'm left-handed. The library where I started using a Mac in '89 had the mouse on the right and the librarian refused to move it for me! No matter; when I want to write or sketch, I do so on ledger bond with a pencil or a Flair, then scan the piece.

My Best,

Gare

[Shaun]

I like it!

Good idea there, putting it on a layerto merge down in a blending mode--unobtrusiveness is key.
Wow, that's quite a feat writing with a mouse.

It took several goes with the mouse before I got what I wanted!
Another method I used was the "disappearing trick" (as someone called it). Type your name (or make a logo) and reduce the layer fill opacity to 0. Then add a slight drop shadow layer style effect.