Effective Company Logos

Logos serve to identify a company or brand. We were tasked to look up five logos that we deemed to be effective and explain why. Here are my top five.

The first being the apple that was bitten into. It was a clever approach to have the stem to be cut from where the current bite is. Not only does Apple use an apple for a logo, but it is a reoccurring theme in a variety of products, such as Macs, short for Macintosh, a type of an apple.

Funimation is a Japanese anime studio. The circle is red, which seems reflective of the nation's rising sun on their flag. There is an absence of straight horizontal and verticals; diagonals are known for being fun, and energetic, reflective of their anime. 

Gamestop, formally known as EB Games, has a rather simple logo which is just the words Game Stop, with "Stop" being written in red. The color red raises alert, while also being symbolic of the action of stopping.

Playstation uses a red P, with a tri-color S, leading to their products being referred to as PS_ for short.

Twitter, when defined is a mass chorus of tweets. What creature tweets, or at least what do most people think tweets? That would be a bird. The white bird on the soft blue background is fun, playful, whimsical even.

These logos are recognizable, with some of them being unchanged from over the years such as Apple and Playstation. They hold true to their identity.

Erick Perez

Brochures, I have always thought that they were for travel destinations and the like, but this homework assignment says otherwise. The goal is to brain storm current pressing issues to inform the masses of. As a social justice advocate, picking three out of the many issues existing within the country...it's just so cruel, so I guess I'll roll with the top three that come to mind, with those being:

Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter/Police Brutality

Privilege and Racism/The Impossibility for Reverse Racism

Gentrification

Black Lives Matter, a movement that seeks justice in the form of reformation of laws and policies to protect people of color, sparked by the murders and abuse of black men and women by authoritative figures, while the murderers in question are often left off the hook with minimal consequences. This is something that has our country divided between people who are aware of systematic/institutional racial injustices and those that believe that those on the other side are hellbent on bringing up the past to cast blame. 

Black Lives Matter is a movement that demands for equality, yet to those that don’t make an effort to understand what  is being said, Black Lives Matter is a movement that pushes for Black Supremacy. The movement is often ridiculed and not taken seriously. In short people of color are crying out to stop being killed, yet people are responding with “but…” 

A counter movement that was raised to Black Lives Matter was All Lives Matter. Despite how true all lives do matter, it is used to mitigate the message behind Black Lives Matter. With more fatalities of young Black and Brown being openly reported, and the charges being dropped, it reflects how to most of society black lives, brown lives, my life does not matter. 

Terminology such as Reverse Racism  soon began to be popular. Reverse racism is what it sounds like, people of color being racist towards “white people.” The truth is, there is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is often used to describe an individual but the reality is that it is meant as an overarching description of a systematic means of securing the status of a group while oppressing the rest which ties into recent talks of various kinds of privilege. Individuals can have their own prejudices towards any particular race, but systematically people of color are never put into a position of societal dominance in the United States.

To help put things into perspective. I am a native to the Dominican Republic, over the summer of 2015 there was a lot of media coverage on the Dominican Republic because of the extreme deportation, local vigilantism and violence against Haitians which connects to the typical denial of black ancestry. That country and its values were strongly shaped by the European Conquistadors and by the former President-Dictator Trujillo who emphasized on the importance of being light. In that society, I as a light skinned dominican can be considered racist only because I am supported by a system that places me over a marginalized group of darker skinned Haitian refugees.

Lastly there’s gentrification, the phenomenon of a populace moving into a community while displacing the locals. It often happens with attempts to revitalize communities, which leads to new businesses, and overall quality of life for some. For the locals, it means struggling to keep a home due to the rise in rent, slum lord landlords doing anything possible to evict residents, to work on negotiations with new potential renters with a much higher rent. After a while the community changes to a point that it is unrecognizable. The culture changes drastically as the remnants of the people are being wiped clean.

Bushwick Brooklyn is a prime example. It used to be an area that was predominantly Black and Latino, with “affordable” rent compared to the rest of New York City. Lately there has been new movement into the community, and the change in aesthetic and culture is very apparent. It becomes more shocking to see these establishments after coming back for vacation once every few months for vacation. What I see there borders closer towards a cultural genocide as you see little to no remnant of the people who lived there, and the soul of the community dies along with it. 

The Beauty and the Eyesore of a Beast

Design is powerful, and influential. As people, we heavily depend on visual stimuli to decide on whether or not to buy, eat, travel, or even right swipe on that girl on tinder if she's stylish enough. Here are a few examples of good and poorly designed media.

Travel brochures promote vacation spots, highlighting the potential experiences that are visually appealing to persuade people to come to the location. 

Travel Brochures

 The Beast: For a disney brochure, it's lacking quite a bit of magic. I'm trying to imagine how much hocus pocus is needed to save this. There is a heavy dosage of text, with little to no images that would help promote the destination; the typos included does not help either. The pictures seem poorly cut out, and just plastered onto the blue background, and who knows where the other half of Fairy Godmother's body is, seriously it's just floating there. There's nothing on here that shows what this place has to offer.

The Beauty: This one is a bit wordier, but carries more useful information, along with visuals that creates the expectation of "What am I going to see when I'm there." The cover image is full and vibrant, with the color temperature being warm and inviting. There is variation between the font face, A cabana-esque title on the front, with Secrets smaller skinner font that gives it a sort of mysterious allure. The overarching background is more of a beige parchment sort of layout, again adding this exoticism.


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Concert Flyers

Concert flyers are supposed to grab your attention when passing by, and keep your attention long enough to find out what's going on. Of course whether or not people go depends more on what band is playing.

The Beast: The piece does a good job of using colors that are not commonly seen, so it stands out, and is an interesting take on the band's signature pig, I would give it that much. The text on the other hand is compressed, like really smushed together. The alternating colors in text is distracting when reading, making it all the harder to read. 

The Beauty: Jeremy McKinnon, need I say more? I jest of course, well perhaps there is a partial truth to it. The flyer has a good contrast between the vibrant light of the image, with the darkness of the rest of the flyer. The flyer is using the image of the band itself in place of using their trademark vulture icon. The use of actual photographs makes it all the more personal, and allows the viewer to see what faces will be there at the show. There is a color consistency in which the color of the band name matches with the date and location to contrast the dark layout. The title is justified and centered, giving it a cleaner look. And centering Jeremy McKinnon. 

Business Cards

One can tell a lot about a person or business by the look of the business card, and if there was any actual thought that was being put into it. Business cards are as important as first impressions, sometimes even more important seeing how if they keep it, they would have a constant reminder of the quality of the person who issued it.

The Beast: I'm looking at it, and wondering where to start. Let's talk font. WHAT. ARE. THOSE?! The typeface is somewhat reminiscent of a sketchy tattoo parlor in China Town, it is used everywhere, and is a strain to the eyes to look at it for a prolonged period of time. The contact information below is more of a handwritten sort of font, this often overused, not all that creative and almost just as an eyesore to look at as well. We can read that this person does photography, yet the images being used does not show any artistic prowess at all. Frankly, I rather let my 12 year old sister take the pictures for me since that's more promising than what this card is advertising.

The Beauty: This card is sleek, modern and pretty clean. It uses color contrast for the displaying and emphasizing content. Centered right, we have the company, and logo in a simple clean and legible font, with two slate arches filled with cerulean coming towards it, leading our eyes to the name. On the left, the contact information is neatly stacked in white on slate, using the same cerulean for the occasional ascents. On the reverse side, we have the logo and company name on slate, but typed in white. So in this piece we have organized content that's well placed, we have color contrast. It's simple and clean.

The First of the Many: Value In Visual Communication

With a wide variety of stimuli out there, a combination of visual and audio communication is needed to get my attention. Like most people my age, I lack the attention span to focus on anything for too long, and me coming from what’s commonly known as the advertisement epicenter, New York City, doesn’t really help either. I mean when you think of it, if I’m constantly being bombarded with ads left and right, there needs to be something to be done to stand out from the rest. Abstract images, or something out of the ordinary in strong bold coloring, combined with distinctive audio is definitely a good means of getting my attention. 

In contrast, sometimes a familiar sight can be just as appealing. I openly admit that I am one of those people that would stop and say to myself “ Hey I’ve seen that!” or dwell on where I have seen said image before. In either case, I’m still thinking on it.

My favorite band, A Day to Remember, had always released albums with cover art that had slight similarities while distinguishing itself from the previous album. From their earliest album And Their Name was Treason to their most recent album Common Courtesy, ADTR had always featured a shot of a male figure from behind as the album centerpiece. It starts with a clean behind shot of a male figure with a blank background, with each new album release, more is added to background, creating a story for that iconic centerpiece. 

Speaking of iconic, Banksy, a well known political graffiti artist, specializes in stencil art graffiti that often juxtaposes contradicting ideas, such as the flower bomber. The male depicted is geared up, as if he was ready to retaliate with violence, yet all he is armed with is a bouquet of flowers. As a media production major, I am touched by the image of a the camera man recording a flower, something that would never happen normally because today’s media is driven to find the most violent sort of news. What also appeals to me about Banksy’s work is the grittiness of his work that reflects the current human condition, sometimes utilizing existing elements such as moss or flooding for environmental related issues.

The more I think on it, street art in of itself, is powerful. When I say street art, I mean something more than a spray and tag.The unique styles tend to show the artist’s character, and often carrying the words the artist wishes to say out loud. Some street art is complicated, others may be more simple but can still carry the same weight in meaning. There are different mediums that can be used such as stencil, stickers, wheat pasting, etc. At times it shows a person’s level of commitment, and tests their ingenuity. Honestly, how many people can say that they have heard of or know what Moss Graffiti is?

Visual communication is definitely a useful form of communication that should not be taken lightly.