farfromfearless
Web 2.0 Logos
I came across a posting early this morning that was essentially a tutorial on producing certain types of effects for graphics. Taken by itself, the tutorial is pretty standard and I am sure that new web designers and industry related professionals will find it useful. However, the very title "Learn to create your own Web 2.0 logo" smacks of irresponsibility and blog-whoring.
Update:
Okay, so this is what it feels like to have egg on your face. Serves me right for not doing a little more to track the posting back to the source (or as close to it as you can reasonably backtrack). Ferchristssakes! Thanks Joe for pointing out the original source, and for setting me back on the straight and narrow. Still, it kind of makes you wonder exactly how many tutorials in this vein that are published under the premise of being legitimate contributions.
For further reading see:
My original rant below:
The act of creating a logo is more than simply throwing typographic elements together with graphical objects and slapping a “Web 2.0″ label on it. To imply otherwise is a disservice to our industry. To actually claim to distill it into a few simple steps is irresponsible at best. The web is cluttered with so much crap as it is; and though many of you might argue that we need to see more such “Web 2.0-ish” material online, I disagree. Whole-heartedly. Before you read further, just know that I am on my soapbox right now.
For reference, you can read the posting here.There are some amazing logos out there; some truly amazing applications have benefited greatly from well thought, well executed logos. Take Blogger for instance. The logo is constructed of very simple objects; the typography is straight forward and relies heavily upon the character of the typeface rather than any shiny treatments as illustrated in the aforementioned posting. The glyph again relies more upon the uniqueness of the character and is further strengthened by the color choice. The impact behind the combined image is solid. It is iconic; works well at a number of different sizes; conveys in a straight forward manner the purpose behind the concept; and finally delivers an image that people can recognize as a brand. Blogger is indelible in the minds of our industry.
The purpose of a logo can be thought of in the same terms as a “maker’s mark”, “craftsman’s mark”, a family or clan crest, etc,. It seems to me that the weight of its meaning is lost upon our generation. A logo - personal or otherwise - says a lot about a person or company. There are so many logos cluttering the advertising/marketing/design world that it is increasingly difficult to establish a recognizable brand or image. But it is not impossible. It requires thought, patience and a real understanding of how design comes together to visualize an idea and execute it in such a way that it becomes, for all intents and purposes, a living image that represents you, your brand, or your company. Far be it for me to tell you what that is or how it should look. All I know is that logos should not be created in such a careless and irresponsible manner. There are standards that we are all responsible for upholding.
Visit your local Chapters bookstore (or Barnes & Noble if you live state-side), and look through the many books they have on the subject. There are dozens. Only a bare handful of them will actually purport to using the techniques outlined in the tutorial I have mentioned. Only a small percentage of those might actually claim to be “Web 2.0″. From my perspective, there is no such thing as a “Web 2.0″ logos. There is style; there is trend; but there is no such thing as a “Web 2.0″ brand of logo. Like a “maker’s mark”, a logo is timeless. Trends are not.
In my mind, when I hear the term “Standards-based design”, I think beyond the underlying code behind a site. For me, “Standards-based design” encompasses the whole of the site from the coding to the presentation layer. The logo for such are truly the pinnacle of achievement - it is the single visual element that tells the user “This person has invested time and energy into this site”. Before the advent of truly “Standards-based design”, we had proponents such as Jeffry Zeldman and like-minded fellows. I found him personally annoying at the time, but he had a message and we are all benefiting from his work and many like them. Design is not so different in those terms. There are standards we should all expect our fellows to abide by or at least strive for. Let us not masquerade as something and claim quality.
I find it deplorable that one might post a tutorial under such misleading terms. Shame on you. May Cerebus gnaw at your legs with all his many heads filled with keen, razor-like teeth.
6 people have left comments
Joe Nicora said:
I guess I feel obligated at this point to say that the article you mention here is a parody.
I wrote this after getting tons of attention from a thread on a frequently visited design forum YayHooray (www.yayhooray.com) reference: http://yh.yayhooray.com/thread/90661/yh-collab:-redesign-famous-logos-in-web-2-0-format?page=1 digg link: http://digg.com/design/Famous_Logos_redone_in_Web_2_0_Format
The thread got “dugg” and was recognized on a number of high traffic blogs, so to add to the joke, I wrote this tutorial. People, I was just kidding ferchristssakes.
Matt Wilcox said:
While I agree with almost everything you say, I’m not actually too bothered about the issue. In the end, design by tutorial is nothing more than a lazy way to shoot yourself in the foot, and I’ll be very surprised if any ‘real’ designers would even look at these tutorials. Any good designer already knows that jumping wholesale onto bandwagons isn’t a smart long-term move.
Web 2.0 is nothing more than a trend, and one with a signature visual style. Trends will always happen, they always have - but aiming to be indistinguishable from the current trend is a great way to ensure mediocrity. I’ve seen tutorials about the web 2.0 colour pallet, the logo styles, the footer styles, the fonts… everything you need to make a truly generic ‘Web 2.0′ web-page. And what designer worth their salt would aim for ‘generic’?
By all means take a nod toward the most recent trend, sure - borrow some elements from it and sprinkle them through your own design. But simply emulating a look en-mass achieves a design that looks reasonably nice in the short term, but loses a great deal of any potential uniqueness, and will look tired and boring literally as soon as everyone is moves away from the current trend. Good designers know this - and I don’t think these tutorials are aimed at such people.
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