Logos ... they're a craft, right?

Unbeknownst to some, I used to own an online logo company. The now-defunct www.offtheracklogos.com sold pre-designed company logos for an off the rack price. For a design fee, we custom designed the logos to fit your company name, colors, etc. It was cool. And our logo was a drag queen. Awesome. We merely took the logos we designed for clients that were scrapped before they got farther than the drawing board. After two of us doing designs for many years, we amassed so many, we wondered what to do with them, and voila - off the rack logos was born! Due to lack of funds, and online theft of ideas and logos (other companies cropped up overnight with a larger marketing budget than us, that stole the idea, stole some of our logos, and even stole our drag queen!) It was a fun idea that sold some logos and gave us experience.

Nevertheless, I've always been fascinated with logos. From the time I realized The Bay's logo was a "B" and not an animorphous blob, or the time I made the connection that the Calgary Flames logo was a flaming C and the Pittsburg Penguins logo was also a P. (My brother had a hockey team logo banner, in case you were wondering about the amount of hockey references) I imagined an intelligent, mysterious presence behind their mystical shape. The art of creating an entire identity, wrapped up in a neat package has always caught my imagination. If you really get into it, logos - now mostly symbols of companies, products, organizations, countries... have been around forever. Their origins come from ancient history. They are used to associate a complex idea easily.

I'd love to share some of my most favorite ones with you.


Toblerone. The delicious triangular Swiss chocolate synonymous with Christmas and duty-free shops in airports is known by their logo - a distinct line art of the Matterhorn. It was created in 1908 by Theodor Tobler and Emil Baumann in Bern, Switzerland. To this day, it is manufactured solely in this I imagine magical town. (Actually, it's not a town at all, it's a huge, thriving metropolis - the fourth largest in all of Switzerland) It is allegedly named after a bear that the duke who founded the town had killed, and is known as the city of bears. Which is the reason for the hidden image in their logo. I hadn't noticed it for years, but it's been there since 1908, when Tobler and Baumann trademarked the logo. Did they mean for it to be a hidden image, or did they hope everyone would see and understand? It's like an inside joke - you don't get it at first, but when you do, you suddenly feel clever.
Can you see it? Look closely - "hidden" in the Matterhorn is the city's namesake.
Whether it was intentional or not, logos that work on different levels like this make me happy.

This next one was definitely thought up by nerds! Eighty20 is a marketing firm in South Africa. The fact that they are a marketing firm means that for sure they have to have a clever logo. I was pondering one day why they have the different colored squares in their logo - what possible meaning that might have. Did they like the colors? Is it code for how many people founded the company? Is it mimicking an office building? As I was pondering this logo, our computer tech was walking by and remarked how clever - and simple their logo was. I turned around inquisitively and asked for an explanation. What he said has given me new respect for the amount of thought that goes into many of these logos. "dark squares are “1’s” and light squares are “0’s”. It’s binary code. Top squares= 1010000= 80 Bottom squares= 001010 = 20"

I'm not going to make an impassioned plea for simplistic logos, or black and white only, or ones with hidden pictures and meanings. I like what I like, and all clever logos are clever in their own way. Share some of your favorites with me - I'd love to know what you think.

Next week, I'll share my most favorite negative space logos. They are the most simplistic, complex and surprising logos out there.
Have fun logo-ing!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! This is the day set aside by the Roman Catholics to honor martyred priests named Valentine. Which somehow became this over-commercialized flower and chocolate and diamond whore-fest we know and love today! Aw, doesn't that give you warm tinglies?

We don't take V-Day too seriously around our house. Like I've mentioned in previous posts, if I get chocolate, I'm a happy bunny, and yesterday my sweet baboo did just that. AND flowers! Tulips and peanut butter cups. Aw! The kiddo made us a treasure hunt for her Valentine's gift for us. Follow the clue type stuff. The clues were very cute: "Go to the place you spend most of your time weekday mornings after you're awake". The bathroom! "Go to the place you spend most of your time weekday evenings" the couch! I'm so predictible. And I'm okay with that. But the tranquility of today is the exact opposite of what happened 3 nights ago, when my daughter (past bed-time, and past the closing time of any stores here) announced "oh, I forgot - we have a Valentine's Day party at school tomorrow and I need 33 valentines for class-mates". Argh! So, I began kamikaze craft #1 of the new year. 33 hand-made valentines. Yay. I often love being "forced" to craft, because lately it hasn't been happening organically, but after a very long day, and on my favorite TV night, with my back screaming at me, I wasn't really too excited. A hasty survey of my craft area revealed a few exciting things: 40 already cut and scored black sheets of card stock - perfect size for cards, 20 already stamped and already cut out cute kid themed pictures. From there, I vowed to make quick-and-easy personalized valentines for the whole class. Here we go.

I took the black card stock, and stamped a cute heart background stamp in white. Very school-chalk board sort of thing. Do they still use chalk boards in schools?
Then I took the class list and typed the entire thing out in a word processor, cut out each name and attached the name to the card with a heart shaped brad. While I was doing this, Kathleen was finishing the other 15 stamped images, and cutting them out. Some for boys, some for girls. I glued these to the outside of the valentine, and my daughter began signing 33 gold stickers. I knew we wouldn't be finished before she dropped from exhaustion, so I figured if she signed stickers, I could finish each invitation as she slept, but all would be personally signed by her. Having each invitation personalized meant no envelopes for time savings! The final step was to use the signature stickers to hold candy in place on the inside of the valentine. Ta dah! 33 personalized, candy holding valentines in under 2 hours! I documented as much of the process as I could, but then got tired and totally forgot, so no finished pictures of the cards. Oops. But they were gorgeous, and very appreciated by the kids. I think it was the candy.

So today, we are all spending the day exactly how we would want: Hubby is on the couch with chips and dip watching Daytona, kiddo is going to her gramma's house, and I am getting together with a couple of friends for some much needed personal time. Yay for Valentine's day! So you all enjoy your happy heart and love day, and know that I love you all!
alana

I'm Twitterpated!

I remember that word from years ago, as a child watching Bambi and Thumber in animated harmony grow up together and find love. Twitterpated. Love. Ah! www.urbandictionary.com defines it as "the flighty, excited feeling you get when you see the object of your affection". Never before has Urban Dictionary been so poetic. Seriously, you usually get hormonal teenagers trying to describe bizarre and impossible sex acts. Sheesh.

What an appropriate time to be twitterpated - St. Valentine's Day is just around the corner - and while I don't really celebrate it at my house - it's usually an excuse to buy everyone the chocolate that you know they love and wouldn't otherwise buy for themselves. If I'm exceptionally lucky, I will get no sugar added Purdy's hedgehogs. But I digress. Even though Valentine's Day is just not celebrated with much pomp and circumstance around here, the idea behind the day gives me warm fuzzies. Ahhh. So why am I so twitterpated, besides the warm fuzzies and prospect of chocolate a few days away? Minuteman Press has finally come into the new millennium. Yes, that's correct - we are now on Twitter. I'm starting to feel old, and new technology is starting to scare me, and Twitter with it's own language and often banal postings from attention whores, and such instant connection wasn't something I thought I wanted, let alone needed. I had never even ventured onto a twitter page for any reason at all until one of our employees got it in her head that Minuteman Press Leduc needed one. "Just one more form of media" and "another way to inform customers and potential customers" were phrases that were discussed as I sat - half distracted by the mountains of work I had yet to work on. How am I going to have the time to Twitter? I wondered as I absent mindedly scrolled down my FaceBook page. I agreed it was a good idea, and completely forgot the conversation. The next day, my wonderful employee broached the subject - "you know what I mentioned yesterday that I would do...?" was her tentative question. I flicked my wrist and shrugged a shoulder. "Meh" was my response. I was expecting her to explain why it wasn't done yet, and I wasn't overly concerned about it. I was about to say "it'll be done when you get to it". I don't really expect my employees to work on work after work. I may be a slave driver, but I'm not mean! And as I lifted up my head to reassure her that all was well, I came face to face with our Minuteman Press Leduc Twitter page. Whaaa..?! I spent half a day confused, another half a day decyphering its bizarre language. Retweet? Sounds like "retreat" as spoken by Elmer Fudd. But retreat I did not (unless you consider the word to mean "to treat yourself again"). I twittered, tweeted and conquered - hooray! Okay, I've tweeted twice, and I still don't know the lingo, or who's following and who's a follower, and it's mostly confusing, but I must admit, it does seem like an efficient way to get news out fast about products, services and promotions at the shop. And once our employee links several organizations to us too, I'm beginning to understand why this is such a good tool. But it still makes me feel old. Now get off my lawn!

So now I can twitter about being twitterpated this valentine's day on my blog, my facebook and on my website. With all this connectivity, where's the privacy? Where are the days of multiple accounts and false profiles? Is internet stalking even a thing anymore? Or is it just that everyone in the world is guilty of it? Maybe I'll spend valentine's day at home with the curtains drawn. But I won't forget to twitter about it later. :)

Whine!

I totally forgot the existance of my blog for many reasons. I thought it was a self-centered act that I was midly (okay, not so mildly) obsessing over. And then I decided to leap head and heart first (brain to follow later) into buying my own business. Since owning the business, I've had too much to do actually RUNNING the business to worry about silly blogs among other things (other things such as actually having a life, for example). And lastly, this is a craft blog, and I just didn't have time to craft - let alone blog about it. I could have blogged about crafts I want to do, crafty people I love, but hell, I had a business to run, and a life to ignore!

But I'm back now, business (mostly) under control thanks to awesome employees and awesome customers, and I just need a place to rant. Be prepared for less crafty things to blog about, more art and graphic design type stuff I'll be putting here because really, it's all related.

Welcome back, me!

BUSY - ARGHHHH!

Well, I'm back from Vegas (ah, please, hold your applause. lol) And it's what I predicted: a LOT of work. So much learning, my brain is nearly full, a lot of NOT sightseeing, a moderate amount of celebrity sightings (Kim Kardashian, Cher, Tom Green...) and a lot of free alcohol. C'est la vie, non?

But now that it's September, things are really winding up (or is it winding down) with the shop. Things are so close, I can barely stand it. Today seemed like a fairly monumentous day for me, but in all reality, little tiny steps have been taken towards this for about five months now. Guh. I can't wait for it to be over and done with. But the shop is getting busier and busier. It's really insane right about now, which is nothing but good news for now and the future. XD

I've managed to catch some paying craft orders, which makes me very happy I can justify the craft spending and FORCE myself to take the time to craft. I'm just quite puzzled with my new invitation order. She seems to want everything except the kitchen sink thrown in - and very crazy, loud colors. I may need someone to help myself or the bride edit some things. Simple and elegant cards are more my forte. Maybe what I need to do is swap projects with Amy - she's super fantastic at these fabulously colored, multi faceted projects, and I like the simpler things... Which is what sh's working on at the moment also. The biggest issue I'm having is how to attach the see through vellum to the card. She doesn't want ribbon, or brads, or eyelets. And if we glue them together, you can see through the vellum. Gah! I should get back to the drawing board. Literally. She wants a silk screen of sea shells all over the invitation. I really need to get practicing drawing...