so sometime last month i set a logo design competition and i promised i would go deeper
into some of the designs that you guys sent into the competition now i hope one thing will be made
very clear in today's video and that is choosing cliche or generic ideas for a logo concept
does not work this video isn't a shame anybody or anyone's work it should be a way to understand
certain things in logo designing learn more about the awesome workflow tool millernote
later in today's video and also how to sign up for free with a no time limit period attached
so in the end just over 300 people enter the competition and i would say at least
25 of those who entered were made up of two concepts that being a film reel or even just a
film itself and that was meant to represent the film that you find in old school movie cameras
and the other concept was that of the hollywood kind of action snapping boards that they use
i mean take a look at how similar these designs appear when grouped together now why is this a
problem and why is it not a good way to come up with a design concept looking at these designs
they are so similar they lose any kind of identity they are easily forgotten due to their lack of
uniqueness and shared appearance if you ask a non-designer to make a logo for a film brand
they would suggest a concept pretty similar to this when generating concepts stay away from
these generic ideas because look your logo is going to become lost in a sea of similar designs
these logos grouped together and not even half of the ideas that were sent to me that looked
like this so it's the first thing i want to talk about in today's video stay away from generic and
obvious ideas or concepts one thing i mentioned in the brief is that it might be a good idea to
experiment with the number seven and also zero in numerical values and that's obviously due to
the fact the brand's name is seven zero there were a lot of interesting designs sent to try
to tackle that problem but this white design on a red background did stand out to me it actually was
in the top 10 of the entries sent to me and it did prove a tough choice to leave out of the top three
in principle i like the logic i like the uniqueness and it's a clever design
i don't like where the trademark symbol is placed and i also don't like that square kind of dots in
the upper right i just don't think it's a good choice but this kind of design that is more
memorable and more brandable was on the right path another design that explored the numbers
7 and 0 was this one here again good logic but i feel like the end result has a few issues
firstly i'm not sure if blue fits into the brief and the background of the brand itself
it's something more conventional for financial companies or social media kind of platforms
something i used to do a lot to my early career is to have two differing font weights on one line
of logo type yes it can look good but for the most part it's often a bad choice for a logo
still i like the originality and i also like the approach that was thought about for this design
another design that was in the top 10 for me and for the people who were judging it was this very
simple typographic logo here this was very unique and there isn't another design like it that i saw
it's trendy and it's modern with that lowercase sans-serif font and it's a
design that you will find difficult to forget simplicity is almost always a surefire bet when
it comes to creating your concepts and we found it difficult to edge this one out the top three
so this design here has also gone for the simplified route
again we see a bold sans-serif font but this time uppercase i think for this brief both a lowercase
and uppercase could have worked depending on how they were used and i did like the way the
designer was going but i felt like it still isn't refined enough and it's not finished properly
oh another kind of concept that kept coming up was the literal symbol of the old film cameras
yes it's another generic design that will become lost but like with the other concepts of an actual
film it's an outdated technology the brief spoke about a trendy and a modern company that was
trying to make a name for itself in the industry having a logo that utilizes outdated technology
as the symbol is almost always going to be doomed from the start remember to pick out the words in
the brief that are essential and important and then make decisions based around those words
trendy modern and cutting edge do not appear in this kind of design so again i'm not slamming
or bashing any designs i myself have designed some bad logos and off-brief designs in my time
and i think we probably all have done that too the important thing is to see how to improve your
logo design process and the final end results if you want to have a complete guide that helps you
with that process grab my 45 page logo design guide via the link in description box below
it's jam-packed full of knowledge and tips and i've only had positive feedback about that guide
and i'm actually thinking about making an extended version as a physical copy later this year
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logo designing just click a video on screen and until next time does on your future today peace
you