Design Process – Introduction

First Ideas

The first ideas centred around the moon and car symbols.

Back to the roots

It was thought that this was moving too far away from the original strengths of the brand, for instance losing the crescent, so I simplified the idea from car to wheel and moon to crescent.

Refining the idea

The tyre shapes were simplified to graphic symbols which were reminiscent of lunar craters which led neatly to a new crescent design. 3D was added to give the crescent some life.

A typeface was created from the original Bauhaus to give a more distinctive version of the text logo.

Final design

The final design is presented below:

black and white:

Brooke Weston Performing Arts Logos

I recently completed a logo design for the new performing arts department at Brooke Weston Academy. They have just moved into their spanking new £4 million extension complete with music studio, IT suites, dance studio and performance areas and wanted a logo to help brand their planned community projects. The brief was a challenging one as I had to incorporate all the arts (music, dance and drama), rather than focus on one.

Spotlights in drama studio

After much discussion we settled on the idea of performance and the logo was born out of the patterns made by the spotlights in the drama studio. The logo also had to fit into the Brooke Weston family without diluting the original brand.

Quick and Easy ident

The video in this post is an example of a quick ident created for a plasma screen in a refurbished reception area. The idea is to use the ident as a break between items or videos; it’s a signal to the viewer that change is happening. Most of this is subconscious of course our brains see lots of these during the day, especially in the days of multi-channel TV, a more than likely block them out. Things have moved on since the first days of Channel 4 and the fuss that the iconic “4″ ident created at the time.

Channel 4 classic ident from 198os

[Show as slideshow]

The name Jackson has constantly been in the news this week, so I thought I’d add to the Jackson related frenzy by presenting this quick and simple logo and ident for Jackson Media. Based in Oakham Northants, Jackson Media specialises in film to DVD transfer and offers many other video services including recording of events and shows. The company is run by a Mr Peter Jackson, who is not related to the Mr Peter Jackson who directed “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong“; although he tells me that on a recent trip to New Zealand he was constantly asked if he was.

Logo for Kettering Science Academy

This logo I created was chosen as the symbol for the Kettering Science Academy, which is a new Academy rising from Ise Community College in September 2009. More often than not, the simplest ideas are the best and this logo is a simple reconstruction of an uppercase “K” (the font is Minion), to incorporate a simple test tube. The bubbles were added to give some colour and movement. The logo also had to fit the corporate family of logos existing in the Brooke Weston Partnership.

Current news logo for the BW News

The new brief for the redesign is a smaller format (A4), more colour, more magazine-like and 21st century opposed to the more traditional inky newsprint image it has now, so it may have to go or over go a makeover. The RKO logo is an iconic piece of design and has itself undergone several revisions in its time.

Those of you over the age of 30, with a liking for watching black and white movies on television will probably have something like this floating through your head, accompanied by Morse code dots and dashes which spell out “an RKO radio picture”:

RKO Radio Picture Logo Circa 1929-1957

This is what you see before watching such films as King Kong (1933), Suspicion (1941) and Citizen Kane (1941). Orson Welles liked the ident for the sound as much as the image:

“My favorite among the old logos, not just because it was so often a reliable portent…. [I]t reminds us to listen.”

– Orson Welles (Thompson (1997), p. 170.)

In 1994 the logo was revised, adding colour, but it is rarely seen now, which is a shame. Peter Jackson used it as seen at the beginning of his King Kong (2005) remake, and surely a deliberate nod to the original.

RKO Radio Picture Logo Circa 1994

In this digital age, RKO’s website has a flash intro that has come full circle in design terms. The flashing radio mast is still there but this time it glows and pulses rather than transmits. The movement is still the comforting quarter revolution of the earth with a zoom but the focus has shifted from the earth to the mast and we zoom in much closer than previous versions. From this pulsing glow the new RKO text emerges incorporating the lightning bolt to the sound of the Morse code.

RKO website intro ident 2009

RKO text logo circa 2009

Web 2.0 stylised RKO logo from their website

Below are some links various RKO video idents and an excellent essay by Rick Mitchell:

Related links

• Lost and Found Hollywood – Old Studio Logos – essay by Rick Mitchell
• Wikipedia entry for the RKO logo – Wikipedia
  
• Video versions of the various RKO logos incarnations – on LiveVideo