This project was retired in the the spring of 2024, but left here for archival pur­poses. For more recent ver­sions of logo design assign­ments, please con­sult the posted infor­ma­tion in the appro­pri­ate CMS.

Goal

The pri­mary goal if this assign­ment is to study the intri­ca­cies of sym­bol and logo design, includ­ing semi­otics, abstrac­tion, fig­ure-ground rela­tion­ships, and adapt­abil­ity. The sec­ondary goal of this assign­ment is to apply the prin­ci­ples of design to cor­po­rate iden­tity arti­facts with­out dis­rupt­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­sis­tent visual char­ac­ter­is­tics of each piece, while uti­liz­ing the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of var­i­ous pro­duc­tion media.

Objective

The objec­tive of this assign­ment is to cre­ate a logo through a process of refine­ment. Develop a con­cept for the logo the directs the even­tual brand­ing. Cre­ate sev­eral ver­sions on paper, and elim­i­nate or mod­ify these ver­sions to cre­ate the best solu­tion pos­si­ble. Choose the most suc­cess­ful logo and trans­late it to the appro­pri­ate media forms.

Background Reading

• San­toro, Chap­ter 4, p 103–126, Chaper 5 p127-150 and Chap­ter 10 p 255–276
• Wheeler, 1–33
• http://​www​.brand​soft​he​world​.com/
• http://​www​.logolounge​.com/
• https://​design​shack​.net/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​i​n​s​p​i​r​a​t​i​o​n​/​1​0​-​t​i​p​s​-​f​o​r​-​d​e​s​i​g​n​i​n​g​-​l​o​g​o​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​d​o​n​t​-​s​u​ck/
• http://​www​.smash​ing​magazine​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​2​6​/​v​i​t​a​l​-​t​i​p​s​-​f​o​r​-​e​f​f​e​c​t​i​v​e​-​l​o​g​o​-​d​e​s​i​gn/
• http://​www​.smash​ing​magazine​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​2​5​/​1​0​-​c​o​m​m​o​n​-​m​i​s​t​a​k​e​s​-​i​n​-​l​o​g​o​-​d​e​s​i​gn/
• https://​just​cre​ative​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​2​/​0​4​/​t​h​e​-​l​o​g​o​-​d​e​s​i​g​n​-​p​r​o​c​e​s​s​-​f​r​o​m​-​s​t​a​r​t​-​t​o​-​f​i​n​i​sh/
• https://​speck​y​boy​.com/​i​n​s​p​i​r​i​n​g​-​e​x​a​m​p​l​e​s​-​l​o​g​o​-​s​k​e​t​c​h​i​ng/
• http://​www​.blog​.spoon​graph​ics​.co​.uk/​t​u​t​o​r​i​a​l​s​/​l​o​g​o​-​d​e​s​i​g​n​-​p​r​o​c​e​s​s​-​a​n​d​-​w​a​l​k​t​h​r​o​u​g​h​-​f​o​r​-​v​i​v​i​d​-​w​ays

Assignment

Cre­ate a set of logos that show­cases your skill as a graphic designer to a prospec­tive employer. Please choose three com­pa­nies from the fol­low­ing list:

• Per­sonal Choice
• Auto Oasis (car)
• Church of per­sonal choice
• AMP Elec­tric (elec­tric)
• Poe and Asso­ciates (engi­neers)
• Fence Co. (fence)
• Green Hill Memo­r­ial Gar­den (funeral)
• Tulsa Over­head Door, LLC (garage)
• Green Acre Sod Farms (grass)
• Cat­nip Cot­tage (ken­nels)
• Metro Machine Works (Machine)
• Bruner’s Old Time Meat Mar­ket (meat markets)
• TNT Secu­rity Ser­vices, LLC (secu­rity)
• Win­dow World of Tulsa, Inc (win­dows)
• Preaus Land­scape (land­scap­ing)
• TRC Dis­as­ter Solu­tions (restora­tion)

Part One

Brain­storm five (5) con­cepts for your cho­sen com­pa­nies. Think as diverse as pos­si­ble, though at least one of the con­cepts must be a typo­graphic solu­tion. Research any nec­es­sary visual mate­r­ial for ref­er­ence. Cre­ate ten (10) sketches on paper for each com­pany to explore vari­a­tions and con­cepts for each. Choose the best three sketches for each com­pany and repro­duce them on the pro­vided template. 

In a fun­nel-like man­ner, com­bine the most intrigu­ing marks with each other to refine sym­bols to a sin­gle solu­tion. Con­cen­trat­ing both visu­ally and con­cep­tu­ally, keep in mind the design prin­ci­ples of Gestalt, con­trast, pat­tern, etc.

Part Two

Eval­u­ate your results and select the best of Part One. At this point, move to the com­puter and refine your sketch dig­i­tally for each com­pany as many times as nec­es­sary to achieve an ideal solu­tion. Remem­ber, black and white solid shapes. No gra­di­ents or tints at this point.

Part Three

Research and cre­ate coor­di­nated color solu­tions for each for use with both print and elec­tronic media. Keep in mind color har­monies and implied emo­tional responses. Present basic RGB/CMYK full color logo for dis­cus­sion. Choose the two best-devel­oped solu­tion from Part One and Two to present for grad­ing. Cre­ate a PDF with a sin­gle logo on each page. (edited 03.10.2022)

Part Four

Choose the best logo devel­oped at this point. With this sin­gle choice, solid­ify your color deci­sions as a part of a con­sis­tently appear­ing set. Each file will have adjust­ments to com­pen­sate for the lim­i­ta­tions of the media, but color should appear the same. Cre­ate the fol­low­ing versions:

1. Black
2. Sin­gle color spot, no gra­di­ents or tints
3. Sin­gle color CMYK, no gra­di­ents or tints
4. Sin­gle color RGB, no gra­di­ents or tints
5. Two spot color, no gra­di­ents or tints
6. Sin­gle color CMYK, no pro­duc­tion restrictions
7. Sin­gle color RGB, no pro­duc­tion restrictions
8. Full color CMYK, no pro­duc­tion restrictions
9. Full color RGB, no pro­duc­tion restrictions

Com­plete the appro­pri­ate tem­plate with the cor­rect logos. Name each file accord­ingly: company_numberof colors_style_colormode.ai. Place a PDF ver­sion of the tem­plate in the appro­pri­ate D2L dropbox.

• The fol­low­ing rubric posted on D2L will deter­mine exer­cise score: Assign­ment Grad­ing and Assign­ment 03.05: Logo Development

Techniques

Cre­ativ­ity, brain­storm­ing, plan­ning, exper­i­men­ta­tion, file hier­ar­chy, struc­ture, nam­ing conventions

Supplies

Paper, pen­cil, appro­pri­ate soft­ware, pho­tog­ra­phy source, USB drive, mis­cel­la­neous mate­ri­als, tem­plate files

Deadlines

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2021. Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2021. Assign­ment Given.

Tues­day, March 2, 2021. Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2021. Part One (Images to D2L dropbox).

Tues­day, March 9, 2021. Tues­day, March 2, 2021. Prints for Part Two.

Thurs­day, March 11, 2021. Tues­day, March 9, 2021. Prints for Part Three.

Thurs­day, March 18, 2021. Tues­day, March 16, 2021. All Parts due for final pre­sen­ta­tion. PDF ver­sion of the tem­plate in the appro­pri­ate D2L dropbox.