Funky Friday Collection – 5 June 2009

Had a couple of weeks break from Funky Friday, kinda fell by the wayside during a busy period. This week we’ve got a focus on logos and branding, with some great links I’ve come across over the last week or so.

Design Inspiration

Amazing One Element Logos – Abduzeedo

Simple is often the best, and this collection demonstrates that. Demonstrating that you can simplify even beyond the standard “graphical element plus logo”, these logos find a great balance in just single element.

50 Excellent Circular Logos – Webdesigner Depot

As one of the primary shapes the circle is strong and simple. No surprise then that it’s been a popular basis for logo design. This article highlights some great examples of circular logos, and displays them in a large enough size to really appreciate. I’m a particular fan of the Accelrys and Lucent logos from this collection.

Video Game Console Logo Gallery – The Retroist

It’s interesting to see genre specific approaches to logo design. The Retroist has pulled together a collection of video game console logos over time. The console market is highly competitive and so logo and branding, standing out from the crowd, is vital. Some of these logos seem almost garish to me.

Branding

The Evolution Of An Auto Brand – Denis Designs

I love the Dodge Charger, I think it’s a beautiful car. It’s also a car with a history, successfully linking back to classic versions with some aspects of its modern design. With models going back nearly fifty years, this is a fascinating visual history that demonstrates both changes in design fashions in general and the Charger branding in particular.

Logo Design RoundUp Part 7 – ImJustCreative

The latest collection of logos submitted to this series has some great work. What’s fascinating is that all the submissions have thoughts on the inspiration for the logo design, and the branding message that they were trying to convey. It’s a great insight into the thought that goes into branding. I particularly like the designs for 903 Creative and DCB Design. I’d recommend that you check out the whole Logo Design RoundUp series, there’s some excellent stuff there.

Design Opinion

2009 Trends – LogoLounge.com

This is LogoLounge’s seventh annual report on trends in logo design. They’ve studied more than 35,000 submitted logos and come up with fifteen trends in design for 2009, with a particular focus on increased use of typography and increased color chroma and hues. Also interesting to see that they highlight the importance of the favicon.

Design Resources

400+ Beautiful Twitter Icons For Your Websites – Blog Godown

There’s something about Twitter that seems to inspire logo designers. I can’t think of any other trending online service that has provoked so many logos and icons. It’s great, it means there are some really imaginative ways of encouraging people to follow you on Twitter. I’m curious though, with so many different icons is the main Twitter brand and logo losing impact?

Stuff To Buy

To Do Pad – Knock Knock

Not branding related as such. Saw this item highlighted on a Twitter post this week. For all the web and desktop apps for task management, I’ve never found anything more effective than written “To Do” lists in terms of day to day task management. This is a great pad that splits your To Do into tasks, errands, correspondence and notes, as well as prioritizing them. It’s awesome.

In addition to all the web pages linked to here, I’m choosing one of my favourite Flickr images from the past week available under Creative Commons. This week’s original image is by Flickr user Tiago Ribeiro.