The name is Relevance Path. The work we do for our clients is online marketing, search engine optimization, etc. Rather than Internet marketing or online marketing we use “Inbound Marketing”, which focuses on “getting found”. Our approach to marketing our client’s businesses is to “Attract, Engage, Nurture, Convert”. excerpt from client’s email 

This is probably the fifth logo design project I’ve handled for my Canadian client JP Obbagy & Keith Haberl.  This time, my Task was to create logo for Relevance Path.

As my usual logo design process, I started with pre-design reserch and gathering of ideas.

Here I made five different some design variations for the logo.

1. Using Funnel (As insisted by the client)

1. Using Graph

Google Analytics style of graph

1. Using Arrow

Two of the pointers facing different directions and another two towards same direction.

1. Using Ladder

1. Using Highway

Revision Rounds.

As client loved the idea of using arrow, so I created few more variations for the same.

Finalizing

Client loved the idea of using arrow in Negative Space.

Logo in Reverse and single colour.

Upcoming website design of Relevance Path.

Cover page of brand identity guideline.

Logo in backgrounds.

Space Division around the logo.

Dummy texts for paragraph formatting style.

Texture with the logomark.

Primary and secondary colors for the logo.

Client’s Testimonial:

“I have worked with Krishna on a number of different graphics projects and keep returning because of his creativity and skill. The latest involved creating a logo for our inbound marketing agency. Based on experience, I knew it was best to give some broad direction but let his creativity come out. In short our guidelines were:

clean, not overly busy,
very few colours, but not “blue chip” colours,
something that evokes trust, knowledge, modern
nothing frilly, dainty or complicated possible use of a funnel or arrow

Krishna delivered with enthusiasm and we found a match in the second round of design alternatives. We particularly like the combined simplicity and complexity of the arrow and have had many compliments. I highly recommend Krishna.”

JP Obbagy
Managing Partner
Relevance Path Inbound Marketing

Visit us: relevancepath.com

Follow us: twitter.com/JPObbagy

Do you think this is creative enough for a survey?

1. Understand the difference between consumers and shoppers.

2. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to package design research.

3. Incorporate the consumer voice into package design.

4. Realize that brand purchase decisions are far more instinctive than rational.

5. Leverage the in-home experience.

An effective package design has staying power; it provides an opportunity to build consumer loyalty and make the register ring again and again. Consider the facial tissue category. It has evolved from consumers choosing the least offensive pattern regardless of brand to consumers seeking out specific designs and colors to match their décor. The product is establishing brand loyalty directly through package design.

Read the rest of this article at Popsop.

May be this logo idea is successful with grabbing visitors eye in 8 second but not good for longterm branding.  Overall impression of your brand goes down when I see big logos around 10 different sites which offers the same product or service.

I’m sure nobody bothers who are using my service but they are more conscious on what my products offers, probably keeping a free and easy demo or easily accessible portfolio and honest testimonials can be more fruitful then those logos.

The word minimalism itself is self-explanatory, and in design I believe its an art of arranging basic optimum objects to make a complete sensible design. With simplistic strokes an artist tries to uncover different and often complex aspects of the subject. The process itself sounds like a complicated one and arguably minimalism can be considered as a refined form of art, the making of which involves cutting down on unnecessary complexities.

Being in the field of graphic design, one thing I could tell you is that a simple design is often the toughest challenge for any graphic designer. Most of the designers, whether he/she be working for a Web Page Design Company, Digital Print Media Company or is a freelance designer, would agree to the fact that giving a minimal look to his/her design that the world would comprehend in a likewise manner is a tough and time-consuming task. These designs, though, may look simple and unsophisticated but in actual are meant to look the way they are and simultaneously provide that easy understanding to the mass of people without them having to ponder  ”What was that?” One fleeting glimpse of the design and you know what’s it all about and perhaps even more.

In India, many product names have ingrained themselves so strongly in the minds of their users that they have started identifying similar items with these names. Like for example, consumers call vegetable ghee as Dalda, a commonly used Vanaspati. Colgate too has developed such a strong branding that toothpastes, in general, are often referred to as Colgate.

Similarly, Coca Cola  tried duplicating this brand building with a tag line “Thanda Matlab Coca Cola” where they tried to position all “thanda“  (chilled drinks as Coca Cola but they were not so very successful in doing so. The reason being that , in order to create such lasting branding  there has to be a monopoly of the product in the market. Dalda and Colgate were launched when there was very little competition. Another reason was that the quality they offered was more superior to or as good as anything else that was in the market at the time. This gave them enough time to establish themselves as a brand that the consumers could trust. When Coca Cola arrived in Indian market there were many sift drink companies that had already set up shop. Also soft drink companies had similar ad campaigns that made it difficult for the consumers to identify one from the other.

Today, advertising agencies and industry experts try to recreate the magic by launching elaborate ad campaigns with celebrities from movie and sports industries to draw consumers but this is just another short-term attraction and not exactly brand building.

So what is real Brand Building?

Primarily Brand Building is about providing  a dependable and quality product to the user, so that over a period of time the user subconsciously starts identifying the product with the company. Xerox  (a manufacturer of photo-copying machines) products have become such a common sight in offices and photocopy booths that the company name is commonly used nowadays instead of the correct word ‘Photocopy’.

Providing impeccable service is an important factor in brand building. Google  is one great example where the search engine has grown into becoming such an integral part of all internet users that the word “search” has more or less been replaced by the word “Google”.

Another factor that helps in leaving a lasting impression is how the name of the company is projected. Which I believe is like getting dressed for the occasion. Great service provider and shabbily designed logo would in my opinion be like a loving husband dressed in shorts and some fancy shirt for his wedding anniversary party.  In contrast to that a simplistic yet meaningful logo/brand identity would leave a lasting impression even to those consumers who haven’t tried the product or service.

Photo: By Paulo Brandão

Just stumbled an enlightening post “Trademark, Copyright and Logos” by Jonathan Bailey. I sincerely recommend this post to graphic designers, especially this is read must advice for freshers. 

To hear intellectual property attorneys describe it, it seems so simple. Copyright covers creative works of expression fixed into a tangible medium of expression. Trademark covers business names, slogans and other items used to identify it in the marketplace. Patent covers ideas and inventions. Simple.

Then what about logos?

Logos are one of those spaces of intellectual property law where there is a great deal of overlap between two areas, in this case copyright and trademark, and businesses are known for using both to protect their logos from undesired use.

So where are the lines drawn? The answers aren’t very simple and requires looking deeper into what copyright and trademark protect and, even then, there aren’t very many clear answers to give, just a lot of gray area that has to be taken one case at a time.

read the full article here

Above picture is taken from Stephen Downes’s flickr page.

Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for…Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace…Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali. The complicated process is worth money. That’s what clients pay for.

Just found above quote on 37 signal’s Signal vs Noise blog. I clicked further and found the whole article on Tony Spaeth’s Identity Works forum, this interesting post is contributed by  Paula Scher.

——

Logos become iconic over time, through their use and in combination with an overall perception of a brand.  They shouldn’t be judged purely as form and out of context, as they are on design blogs, because it takes a period of time for a logo to establish itself in the marketplace, just as it takes a magazine a year or so to establish its personality.

Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for. Right alongside the blog complaint that “any design student could do a better job” is the comment that the designer at hand got “hundreds of thousands of dollars to design that logo that could have been better designed by a design student.”

Read More from the source

]]> http://www.kriszha.com/what-they-don%e2%80%99t-teach-you-about-identity-design-in-design-schools/feed 0 http://www.kriszha.com/how-much-charge-logo-design http://www.kriszha.com/how-much-charge-logo-design#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:13:48 +0000 kris http://www.kriszha.com/?p=832 Posted in Articles

Here’s the anecdote …. let’s call the client Josh.

Josh approached me through another client’s referral. He wanted a logo and after some bargaining we agreed on an amount. I took him for his word and on good faith send him some design concepts. Three sample designs caught his eye and he wanted to take ‘em  up.  I tweaked the designs a bit to make it more riveting and relevant and send it across to him. He told me that the new designs were neat and that he loved them ….however … I had to convince his wife as well. Whhhoa This was new …..

After 10 designs and 15 revisions his lady finally approved a design. Back on course , I now send him the source files, pdf style guides etc.
I had struck a chord with Josh hence he  was very keen to collaborate on some other projects. I hadn’t been paid for my work so I send him a reminder. He told me it  was taking  time for money to be credited into his paypal account hence  I got cracking on the new assignment.  Send him some quality work which he liked and this continued for  some time before we hit a road block. You see I hadn’t yet been paid for any of my designs and things were getting awkward.

Well he finally summoned the courage to tell me that he had to sell his dog to pay me. I was incredulous but he said he was serious. I thought I’d humour him a bit so… encouraged him to sell his pet… as pets are no good, they won’t bark at website hackers, can’t chase out content stealer and are a nuisance anyways . And the outcome, Well….I Finally got paid :)

Conclusion: Nowadays for every assignment, I prefer 50% of the total amount in advance & the rest post completion .

You see A man’s got to be paid for an honest days work ……… one of life’s lesson’s for me

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