Symbols and Colour

The new Brief is to find meanings in symbols. We were given a sheet with seven symbols on them which are logos, printed in black and white and the first task if to decide what they are for. Then once we have come up with some ideas of what we think they could represent we can then re design some using colour, improving the design based on the idea of what we think there for.


We discussed some company's and their branding image, how they have developed over time and changed their appearance with the times.
Also mentioning that the more successful logos tend to be vectors and logos that include images 'photos' with tone don't usually work so well. I think that vectors have a much stronger appearance and are more easily readable in different sizes. Images also tend to be a maximum size and if they are made any bigger they loose detail where as Vectors if drawn in illustrator can be stretched after beings designed and still retain their detail. 


I came up with some possible ideas for the symbols that I though they might represent. I decided to first re design the pencil and film symbol bases on the idea I had of it being for video or film editing.
With this in mind I thought of film editing and cutting and editing film, so I initially thought of using scissors to symbolise cutting film. The shape of the film drawn in the logo looked quite good as it was so I didn't make much change to that part of the design only slightly editing it.


After this I went on to look at more logos and further research them.
I took out two books from the library 'Logo Lounge' Volume 3 by Catharine Fishel & Bill Gardener
This book includes over 2,000 international Identities. I found this very interesting and used it to pick out logos that I thought were well designed and others which I didn't like so much. Also it gave me a chance to think about which were Implicit & Explicit designs. 
These are some that I picked out that I found interesting and I think are well designed and thought through.

The second book I looked at was 'The front & lettering Bible' By Leslie Cabarga 2004. I found a lot of useful information in this book and the way that it's written from the point of view of the designer who's writing it and their experiences makes it very interesting to read and relate to.
It looks back at some of the first establishing logos that were often taken from paintings. Such as  the 'Dutch Boy' & 'White Rock Girl' which were reproduced from oil paintings.