With that said, please read the specifications for submittal, where we tell you what kind of file we need, the size requirements*, naming conventions and how to provide us with your desired linkage**.

John Downer once compared the work of professional sign painters and type designers, concluding that "exploring the two subjects simultaneously shows that at any given time, each discipline somehow influences the other." He went on to muse about "the visual dialogue between, say, the myriad graffiti 'taggers' [or untrained, nonapprenticed letterers doing sign work] and legions of self-taught, novice users of type design software…". (1) Tokyo-based designer (and frequent PingMag contributor) Ian Lynam has followed Downer's lead and produced Parallel Strokes, a book of interviews with graffiti writers and typeface designers. There is an ever-growing number of books on graffiti, and a scant few on type design, but this is probably the first volume to give both practices an equal footing. (2) While the content of the book leans heavily towards graffiti, Lynam's originality lies in approaching all of his subjects as creators of letterforms, plain and simple.

Cover, above. Spread showing work by Jonas Williamsson.

Lynam presents his central idea in the introduction to the book. "If we look at graffiti and typography and study their visual commonalities as lettering, much is revealed. Writing is graphic design. This is the first line of Gerrit Noordzij's essay, The Nature of Writing, the introduction to his argument that writing is graphic in nature and reliant upon aspects of visual perception such as form, rhythm, color, shade and composition. Examinations of vernacular lettering have explored the visual and semantic importance of our most common surroundings. In doing so, graffiti was often noted, but had rarely been critically assessed in design writing within the last thirty years. Perhaps deemed too transgressive, too immature, or too inaccessible to design culture at large, graffiti had consistently been treated as kids' stuff. As graffiti matured and diversified, more and more of its aesthetics seeped into graphic design, and it gained acceptance in the popular culture at large. (…) Beyond aesthetic fashion and subcultural trends, graffiti and design, specifically typography, share a common ancestry in the written word."

A basic tag by Renos.

More elaborate pieces, also by Renos.

Bubble lettering by Giant.

Once he presents his theme, he takes the reader on a brief tour of the history of graffiti, mostly concentrating on the regional styles of late twentieth century America, and explains some basic terms (such as tag, piece, and throwup). More importantly, he conducts a formal analysis of graffiti writing's letterforms, drawing on essays by John Downer (from which I quoted above) and Gerrit Noordzij to show correspondences between graffiti, lettering (including sign painting and showcard writing), and type design. "There's an often hidden relationship between these two lettering practices, typeface design and graffiti, that is worth looking deeper into. (…) I hope this book helps others find meaning and widen interest in both the historical and contemporary landscape of lettering." This makes "Parallel Strokes" a great title for this volume, and the point is further reinforced (albeit subtly) on the cover, which juxtaposes a photograph of a graffiti-covered wall with custom lettering by Dutch type design collective Underware.

Spread showing sketches by Dutch type designers Underware.

The heart of the book is made up of nineteen (3) interviews. As if to prove one of the author's points, many of his subjects have multiple, overlapping careers. (Chaz Bojorquez, Lady Pink, and Barry McGee are graffiti writers and fine artists, while Jonas Williamson is a graffiti writer and a partner in the graphic design studio Reala. Tauba Auerbach, a former sign painter, is now a full-time fine artist. The members of Handselecta are graffiti writers and typeface designers. And so on.) Each interview is crammed with photographs, many previously unpublished, of the artist's work. While the individual interviews do not always seem directly related to the ideas presented in the introductory essay, as a whole they provide a rich panorama of two interconnected worlds, exposing the reader to a wealth of ideas, names, and information. Akira Kobayashi, Chaz Bojorquez, Underware, Lady Pink, Renos, and Handselecta deliver some of the meatiest interviews. The shorter interviews left me wanting more, but they do include several pages of photographs as compensation. One other quibble I have is with a few transcription errors here and there.

Spread showing graffiti by Delta.

Cedar Lewisohn, in his recent book Street Art, makes a clear distinction between graffiti writing and street art. "Graffiti writing is an activity completely reliant on the tag. (…) We can see graffiti writing as a genre that, generally speaking, revolves around typography and letter formation." I'm sure Lynam would concur. Even when the artist being interviewed has very abstract-looking graffiti (for example, German partners Daim and Seak), letters turn out to be the origin or basis of this work. Lynam clearly loves letterforms, and his questions allow his subjects to give an account of their career paths — but also to reflect on, and analyze, their own practice. Now and then interviewer and interviewee lapse into insider terminology, but this is not a significant problem throughout.

K, by Tauba Auerbach. Ink on paper.

In preparing this review, I discovered that Parallel Strokes is an extension of Lynam's thesis at CalArts. "I had come up with the idea for this project about a year or so before attending CalArts," he told me by e-mail. "In my break between years at CalArts, I spent a lot of time riding my bicycle around Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco photographing graffiti that I thought was relevant, so I have enough raw material for a few books." This aspect of the book, the documentation of the subject matter, deserves some commentary. Photography has been essential to graffiti's popularization. Seminal books like Subway Art, along with documentary films such as "Style Wars", helped to spread the influence of the early New York tagging styles to the rest of the world, inspiring others to pick up a can of spray paint, leave their mark, and develop writing styles of their own. In addition, graffiti tags and pieces can be painted over at any moment — photography allows them to live on beyond their physical disappearance.

Spread showing sketches by Akira Kobayashi.

Which brings me back to Parallel Strokes. The interior of the book is printed in just one color, magenta. This bothered me at first, but later I realized that by printing in just one color, the book lets you focus on the lettershapes of the work shown. Still, I asked Lynam about this, and he gave me a brutally honest reply. "It was a matter of the printing cost: 4 color is just immensely more expensive. As far as going with the spot color, it was just an intuitive choice. Strange enough to be appealing while dark enough to be readable. Black would have been boring." Most of the images translate well from 4 colors to 1, but a few suffer from lack of contrast. Also for reasons of cost, the book employs perfect binding instead of case binding. This poses a problem with images that take up an entire spread, as the center gets lost in the gutter.

This book is the first from Wordshape, Lynam's boutique type foundry. In an e-mail, he told me that "I've always self-published on one level or another, and Wordshape is the culmination of that. In the 90s I ran a small D.I.Y. publishing venture called Migraine that put out zines, comics, books, and the occasional record. Wordshape is similar in spirit, though the output differs in being focused on language, both spoken and physical." For his next project, he is compiling a book version of Néojaponisme, the online Japanese cultural criticism journal that he co-founded and edits.

Two typefaces from Handselecta, based on the lettering of actual graffiti writers.

Meanwhile, Lynam's copies of Parallel Strokes, which he was selling on the book's website, have sold out, but the book is still available from a number of distributors. Lynam told me that he is "not planning to do a reprint at the present time. There are still enough copies out there to satisfy initial demand. I would be interested in partnering with a larger publisher for a second edition, but the opportunity would have to present itself." I, for one, hope that if the first run sells out, Parallel Strokes gets the four-color reprint it deserves. Either way, readers coming from the world of graffiti can learn something about type design, and those coming from the world of type design can discover something about graffiti writing. Both kinds of reader can walk away with a broader view of lettering, encompassing its highbrow and lowbrow manifestations.

Footnotes
(1) John Downer, "Brush Tracks to Type Design," in Lift and Separate: Graphic Design and the "Vernacular", Barbara Glauber (ed.), The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, Cooper Union, New York, 1993.

(2) Nicolete Gray briefly analyzes graffiti from ancient Pompeii in A History of Lettering, but it is barely a few lines in a 255-page book.

(3) Although the book's advertising states that it contains twenty-plus interviews, Lynam had to leave a couple out. In an e-mail, he told me, "There were two writers who did really amazing interviews but couldn't provide decent shots of their work."

Ricardo Cordoba is a Brooklyn-based graphic designer and production artist currently freelancing at McCann Erickson. He spends way too much time on FontStruct.

A / No. 42 / Armin / Pimp my Lamborghini… with a Sharpie? [Via Dark Roasted Blend]

C / No. 45 / Yael / Weirdest, most beautiful flowers in the world. If you need inspiration, the forms of these flowering beasts are incredible.

C / No. 52 / Neal S / Maryland/DC regional grocery store chain Giant has launched a new logo.Here's the old one.

C / No. 43 / NewBomb / So you're a designer? What kind?

A / No. 46 / Armin / Next time you are in Sillicon Valley stop by the Progress Bar for a drink. [Via ffffound]

C / No. 54 / Dave Werner / Lenticular printing done right. Awesome map solution.

C / No. 42 / Josh B /
Customer: "Hi, I'd like a cake please."
Supermarket Baker: "Ok. No problem. What would you like the decorator to put on the cake?"
Customer: "Olympic Rings."
Baker: "You got it."

A / No. 44 / Armin / "101 Classic Computer Ads." That's, like, ITC's complete type collection in use. [Via ISO50]

A / No. 35 / Armin / Marvelous: The Writing Spoon, shaped like a fountain pen so that you can write with coffee, wine or chocolate. [Via TolleBlog]

A / No. 47 / Armin / A collection of Fanta bottle caps from around the world.

A / No. 34 / Doug Bartow / No one quite knows what these 1967 matchbooks featuring Olympic sports icons are for, but we all do know that they rock.

C / No. 53 / Diane / A cool conversion table inspired by antique printers blocks from Crate and Barrel.

A / No. 45 / Armin / More artists for Obama, this one asks the tough question, "Who Killed Barack Obama?". Direct link to the image. [Via Artkrush]

A / No. 50 / Armin / Nice, simple can design for the new Red Bull Cola. [Via BuzzFeed]

A / No. 41 / Armin / Shellfish, "a typeface made with shells as a starting point for a non profit organization that raises funds to help the people affected by the oil spill that happened in the Galicia coast of Sapin in to 2002." Best viewed through the PDF. [Via I Love Typography]

Without getting overly sappy, I think this is something we should all remember. As employers, this should be a reminder that hiring a young designer should not be seen as hiring as someone without experience, but hiring someone with potential. As students, this should be taken as motivation to work additionally hard when given first, second, third opportunities; just because you were hired based on what you may think is an awesome portfolio, you've been given an opportunity to demonstrate what you can do, so don't mess it up. And, finally, as evolving designers who may be on their own or heading a design firm, I think this needs to be considered as a consistent driving force in that every new project and client won are opportunities. Opportunities to break into a new industry or a new medium. Opportunities that build experience.

Experience comes naturally.

My plan for the workshop is to investigate the visible and tangible parameters of graphic design — type specimens, halftone screens and, in particular, colour tests and calibration charts — and make a book of our own self-produced tests which we will send to print on Friday afternoon using the online print-on-demand system Lulu. The book project will therefore act as a colour/type/pattern test of the very system with which it is produced. "Print-on-demand" is an increasingly important production system which can serve to make us designers rethink the impact our profession has on the environment and to question the often wasteful print volumes and production methods requested of us by our clients. Graphic designers, and especially students, have a chance to use and subvert these relatively new (and fairly cheap) technological systems to our advantage.

The result of the workshop is Dear Lulu, a fantastic and imaginative resource that puts digital printing to the test through a Do-It-Yourself presentation that fits right in with philosophy of print on demand that makes it such an alluring proposition for designers looking to publish with little financial risk and with pretty decent results in return.

The first section of the book testing color portraits, shows the students, each dressed in a different color, posing outside in still life photographs featuring other random items in the same hue. The photos are then reproduced as CMYK, RGB, Grayscale and Half-tone so that you can see which color model is better — pretty amazing that RGB prints so well, and pretty amazing to think that sending an RGB to offset printing could cost a designer his or her job or thousands of dollars to reprint the washed out photo.

Line and pattern tests are interesting, just to see how far you can go with thick and thin lines and how crazy you can get with radiating patterns.

The typography tests are very helpful, as I think it's always been the weakest point of digital printing. Black type always looks good, as it just requires drawing ink from the black "cartridge" of a printer much like offset printing, but whenever color type enters the equation, things get messy quickly, but as is clear in the book, as long as you do color type on a white background it will look pretty good. A surprising thing from this book was to see how well small type (around 4pt) in black holds up, and also when reversed.

One of the most interesting sections of the book is in the end, where the students test the finishing capabilities by seeing how close to the edge you can get, and drawing guidelines to see how straight the trimming is. My copy on page 96 demonstrates how things are not perfect: At top edge of the page there is text that says "Good Cut" and to its left I can see the very bottom of text, positioned outside of the document's margins that says "Bad Cut." Funny.

Dear Lulu is a great tool to test digital printing. You can do it for Lulu, of course, by purchasing the book but you can also do it for your own printer by downloading a free PDF. The book lacks the sophistication of your typical paper or printer promotion but, as I mentioned, things change. Graphic design is no longer solely about the most beautiful photograph or the most expensive paper in the most refined layout: It's about effectively producing messages and experiences that can be easily distributed.

A / No. 23 / Armin / If you are going to fill a magazine cover with a thousand cover lines might as well make it look cool: Esquire goes with handwriting. [Via Magtastic Blogsplosion]

A / No. 31 / Armin / Dane Cook doesn't find the Photoshop work on his latest poster funny. In other news, people don't find Dane Cook funny.

A / No. 24 / Armin / Does the internet need another design blog? Yes, as long as it's well written, considered, organized and has awesome posts like a breakdown of airline logos.

A / No. 26 / Armin / Wow, talk about a blast from the past… Misprinted Type, the beacon of "good" free grunge fonts from the late 1990s has a new design after many years. Good times. [Via Idea Fixa]

A / No. 22 / Armin / A look at current movie posters in Belgium and The Netherlands. Scroll down to their version of George Clooney's Leatherheads, you would think you would be watching Casablanca.

A / No. 21 / Armin / A "mirror" made out of wood blocks. [Via Dark Roasted Blend]

C / No. 23 / Kevin / Why did I purposely shrink that t-shirt my Mom gave me with the kanji on it? Internet translators suck. Sorry Mom.

A / No. 30 / Armin / Can't deal with chopsticks? Try the gorgeous Tukaani (Finnish for toucan) by Lincoln Kayiwa.

A / No. 25 / Armin / Here is a tough type test: "Can you guess the movie poster from just one letter?" Incredibly hard. I was only able to answer 23 out of 46, and from those I only got 17 correct. [Via SwissMiss]

A / No. 27 / Randy J. Hunt / R/GA of Superman film title fame opens a brand design division.

C / No. 25 / Doug Bartow / remember Wacky packages?

A / No. 28 / Armin / IDEO has a new web site. Comprehensive, to say the least. [Via Creativity]

A / No. 20 / Armin / The official opening titles of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, as issued by the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting.

A / No. 29 / Armin / "The Great Cover Debate is a poll to find the [UK's] favourite magazine cover." Um, they are all terrible. End of debate. [Via MagCulture]

C / No. 21 / Kai Salmela / Hipster: The Dead End of Civilization. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Thanks to Christopher Wade Sherron

A / No. 10 / Armin / I ♥ logos with ♥s.

C / No. 7 / Billy Carlson / Really cool signage system.

A / No. 15 / Armin / Postcode is the best free typeface based on a 1978 Dutch postage stamp. Ever. [Via Grain Edit]

C / No. 8 / Niki / Apparently I've been living under a rock. How did I not know there was a Graphic Design Forum? (slapping forehead...)

C / No. 6 / Diane / Safety Slogan Signs. They can be customized too!!!

A / No. 12 / Armin / Fun with Letraset. [Via TypeNeu]

C / No. 9 / Sander / A photo showcase of typeface FF Meta in your everyday life. Take a look around you... Did you have your Meta today?

A / No. 14 / Armin / Water bottles like you've never seen them, almost as objects of art in these beautiful photographs. [Via SwissMiss]

A / No. 1 / Armin / Clever print ad "The Most Dangerous Species in the Mediterranean" including the condom, the trash bag and the cigarette butt.

A / No. 16 / Armin / A convoluted publicity stunt to announce the launch of a new car in London. [Via DirectDaily]

A / No. 2 / Joe Marianek / "Twenty-three-year-old Louis Deenan, undeniably the most detestable, loathsome individual ever to walk the earth, willfully decided Monday to devote his miserable life and all of its awful ambitions to the field of marketing," reports the Onion. [via Kottke]

C / No. 13 / Chad K / We have seen the MADrid logo, but your haven't seen anger until you have checked out these other spanish logos. [via Coudal]

C / No. 4 / Able Parris / August desktop is here. Is summer really almost over? :(

C / No. 15 / Chad K / Evolution of the Olympic Torch. A must see from the NYTimes

C / No. 12 / Tim Belonax / Contentment: now in a can!

If you've recently been to one of the museums listed below, or if you are close by, or work for them, or know someone that is going, we would be so grateful if you could get us a physical specimen. We are happy to cover postage charges. E-mail us if you can help!

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
Design Museum London
MoMA
SFMoMA
Graphic Design Museum Breda
The Victoria & Albert Museum
The Wolfsonian

The Challenge: Hire four online logo design companies, give them the same visual identity problem to solve, then critique the results.

The Kitty: Spend less than $1,000 USD total on all four companies, getting as many distinct variations as possible.

The Players: But how to choose? Simply googling logo design returns 11.7M hits in a mind-boggling .13 seconds. However, companies that play in this online space must successfully manage their search engine optimization, or SEO, to ensure that they appear at or near the top of search engine results consistently. Their business development depends upon it. Acknowledging this, I chose the top four non-sponsored returns from my Google search. The contestants, in search results order, are: the Logo Loft, Logo Design Pros, LogoBee and the notorious thousand-pound gorilla of online logo companies, Logoworks.

The Task: Invent a fictional client in need of a new logo. It should be fun, fast, colorful and kick-ass...rollerderby, of course! It's a 'sport' familiar to most, but not so actively followed by the masses to make for an easy identity job without a modicum of research into the history and aesthetic of what is known in the biz as flat track derby. I found a rich collection of active clubs on the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association www site. There's also a great Q & A section on the official rules for rollerderby, which are much more complex than I ever imagined. e.g. Q: "When do referees stop the jam-in-progress for a jammerless jam?" No, I'm not making this stuff up.

The Client: Troy, NY (id29's hometown) was one of the original nine cities that in 1871 formed the National Association of Professional Baseball Players, which survives today as Major League Baseball's National League. Although Troy's team only lasted two years, they did sport a winning record (28-25,) and I discovered with some amazement that the domain name was available—perfect for my fictional upstart rollerderby team—the Troy Haymakers Flat Track Derby Club.

Let the games begin.

What makes the Logo Loft different? According to their site, "Any logo designer is capable of interpreting and fleshing out your logo design ideas, but what truly sets the Logo Loft and it's [sic] logo designers apart from the competition is our dedication to your satisfaction...According to the Graphic Artists Guild you'll pay $2,000 to $10,000 for a corporate logo design at a traditional logo design firm. With the Logo Loft you save thousands on your new logo design! Complete corporate identity for only $99." Wow! Why pay $10,000 when you can get the same thing for $99? Excited, I pored over the numerous options that the Logo Loft offers as packages: anywhere from one to five designers working on as many as six custom logos. The more expensive options feature "unlimited revisions," which, as a design firm principal, makes my skin crawl. Given my budget, I opted for the Logo Loft's Starter Package for $99: One designer, one custom logo design delivered in four business days and, of course, their 100% satisfaction guarantee. All of the Logo Loft's packages—as well as most of their competitors—promise final electronic file delivery in vector and pixel-based formats, and offer upgrade packages for www design, letterhead, business cards, etc…

The online order process was amazingly simple. In addition to collecting my credit card info at the start, the Logo Loft asked only a few optional questions such as: What colors would you like to see in your logo, what colors to avoid and what companies have logos that you like? There was a series of checkboxes to select a "feel" for my new logo such as high tech, formal/corporate, artsy, industrial, kids, etc… I chose "other" and text entered, "Sports. Fast paced. Violent. Entertaining." For color preferences, I chose 'blood red' and suggested avoiding pastels. A no-brainer.

Logo Loft critique:
The Logo Loft sent me three slight variations on a single design. My initial reaction was, "what is Marvin the Martian doing in my rollerderby logo, and why does he have condoms for feet?" Unfortunately, the illustrated figure floating over the gray tribal 'tattoo' art is far too masculine for a woman's flat track derby club. The emphasis should be tough *and* feminine. This is a critical piece of information for this job that I didn't explicitly disclose during the 'client briefing' process. I was interested in seeing how much research these companies would actually do in advance of beginning the design process. The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association site is very easy to find online, and the members' page links directly to more rollerderby club sites that you would normally want to visit in one sitting.

The color palette of blood red, black and gray feels on target, and the stylized and outlined retro-script face that "Troy Haymakers" is set in is both strong and memorable enough to probably do most of the heavy lifting for this mark all on its own. This text works better in a single arched measure (version one) than it does stacked. The "Flat Track Derby Club" text, set underneath in two different weights of Copperplate Gothic doesn't quite integrate with the script, and the tension between the "D" in "Derby" and the bigger of the two condom feet (version one) is visually problematic. In addition to Troy's involvement with the genesis of Major League Baseball, the city was an integral part of America's 19th-century Industrial Revolution, particularly in the collar- and cuff-making industries. Is the inclusion of Frederic Goudy's Copperplate Gothic here—which utilizes that Victorian display type aesthetic—a well thought out reference to that rich history? I'm hoping that it is, and I will give the use of that typeface here the benefit of the (considerable) doubt and deem it 'spot on' for this identity. Well played, Logo Loft! Variation three is the strongest of the group, focusing on the central typographic elements, and downplaying the illustrations. Opening this version in Photoshop and erasing the illustrative elements altogether would improve it considerably. Overall, there are some serviceable typographic parts here, but the conceptual disconnect caused by the tribal art and stylized cartoon character make all three variations weaker as a whole.

Logo Design Pros' web site is incredibly similar to the Logo Loft, featuring multiple "100% guarantee" animated bursts and stock photographs of attractive female customer service reps wearing headphone mics poised to help upon mouse over—much like the ubiquitous Mac Warehouse girl from back in the day. Memories. What does Logo Design Pros offer above and beyond their competition, you ask? How about Unlimited Concepts! Simply purchase package three for $498, and they will "provide an unlimited number of entirely new concepts for your logo design, created by other designers, if you aren’t satisfied with the initial concepts." Whoa, they have upped the ante from the Logo Loft's "unlimited revisions" above. Unlimited new concepts? The image of a hamster endlessly spinning in a wheel immediately comes to mind. "Logo Design Pros offers the lowest and cheap [sic] prices for custom logos to be found on the net." Unfortunately, I found that statement to be less than believable, as I had to lay down a whopping $198 for their least expensive option, the Startup Business Package. However, for this price I have been promised four logo samples created by two designers. I chose to be patient and wait the 2-3 days as advertised, rather than pay a $100 up-charge for 24 hour delivery.

If you thought the requested client information to begin the design process for the Logo Loft was extremely thin, Logo Design Pros has simplified this process even further, requiring only: A name for the logo, a brief description of the business and an optional question, "what type of overall feeling would you like to project with your new logo? (corporate, fun, high-tech, etc...) Leave this field blank if you would like us to make this determination." The idea that Logo Design Pros could somehow determine the appropriate overall feeling for a new visual identity with only the business name and a brief description seems ludicrous to me, and totally at odds with the idea of offering unlimited concepts. I think I hear the hamster wheel again. Sufficiently scared, I throw them a bone, and offer, "all women, rough, fast-paced, raw, exciting, dynamic, LIVE action!" This is perhaps the shortest client brief in history.

Logo Design Pros critique:
Logo Design Pros hit their deadline, and delivered four versions of my new logo exactly on the third business day after I placed the order. There was no indication separating the marks between the two designers that were advertised to work on this job, but it was visually obvious that versions one and two were from the same artist. More like visual 'treatments' than logos or discrete identities, both remind me of over-stylized clip art and miss the mark entirely by focusing on wafer-thin and leggy fashion models over the rough-and-tumble look that defines rollerderby athletes. Version one is unusable altogether as it depends on a black background for legibility. Version two looks like a stock illustration for a débutante's ball. I'm not sure what the point is of including a detailed close-up or the knock-out version, but it does serve to reinforce the point above about the lack of usability of version one.

The typography is neither inspiring nor memorable, and looks timely (and already dated) to my eye. Versions three and four do a better job of marrying illustration and letterforms in a more traditional 'logo design' sense. However, version three seems disjointed with the floating skates below the text, and the illustration bears a striking resemblance to that used in the Minnesota Roller Girls logo—from the simple orange/yellow gradated wordmark and linear helmet to the two black swashes of hair on the left. Coincidence? I certainly hope so. The fourth version features Adrian Frutiger's Univers-Condensed Bold Oblique, usually a solid choice, but a star with stripes and the use of red and blue on a white ground immediately makes me think of a political banner destined for a metal sign holder and a front yard somewhere in November.

Finding suitable images on the internet to use as reference material for illustration purposes is nothing new for designers. For identity design, where originality and distinctiveness are paramount, this practice can be a slippery slope if done hastily and without care. To me, the image in version four looks a bit too much like the stock vector roller skate drawn by Gesche Wendebourg available for public download on istockphoto.com. Convincing me that the yellow stars on the sides of both skates were developed independently of one another might be possible, but would make for a difficult argument. Not terribly impressive work on the whole from Logo Design Pros in these four variations—but I do have two more to go!

Bringing some international buzz to the competition is Montreal's LogoBee. Self-described as a "multiple award-winning logo design company… LogoBee, Inc., has been providing its customers with high quality logo design for over eight years...winning top honors at the Summit Creative Awards and American Design Awards." Following the latter link, I found they did win a second place prize in the 2006 Winter Semi-annual American Design Awards. The awards page is rather thin on content all around, with no indication what the mark is—or who it is for—but it is well drawn nonetheless. Can LogoBee bring that level of visual goodness and originality to my upstart rollerderby club? After the entries above, I certainly hope so.

LogoBee's different packages are easier to understand than most. The Google link where I originally found LogoBee had a coupon code for $20 off, and it worked (shocker!) I selected the "Special Package" for $249 (plus save a cool Jackson with the code.) This package gives me six logo design samples and 6 revisions. I'll have to wait five business days after my payment with LogoBee—not quite as fast as Logo Design Pros' 2-3 business day guarantee—but hopefully the results will be less "stock-a-riffic."

Immediately after my LogoBee order was placed and my credit card was charged, I got a personal email from Karina, my project coordinator. Karina gave me her email address and a phone number (with extension) and invited me to view some logo samples from their site, noting what I liked about some, but didn't like about others. Furthermore, she had some specific questions for me regarding the look and direction I wanted, such as: Who are your clients? What is your business' history? What kind of fonts do you like? Would you like something more serious and traditional, or modern and artistic? She gave me a personal URL that I could use to view my logo samples when they were ready. Trying to the keep the playing field level, I responded with the same information I gave the Logo Loft and Logo Design Pros.

LogoBee critique:
Like clockwork, my custom URL was populated with 6 variations of brand new Troy Haymakers' logos in five business days. Unlike Logo Design Pros submissions, the six logos from LogoBee were most likely designed by one staff artist. I have no problem with that—the package I bought didn't advertise more than one designer. However, the majority of the marks feature very similarly styled illustrations of skaters with colored swashes designed to indicate movement and speed. From the quality of the drawings, it's reasonable to assume I didn't get the same designer who won the American Design Award in 2006. Fair enough.

As interchangeable as some of these marks appear, what really struck me in all six was a lack of typographic quality in general. As an obsessive type-nerd who has aced the Rather Difficult Font Game numerous times, it's a rare day when I can look at six separate logotypes and not recognize the primary typeface used in a single one. I don't think I've ever seen any of these fonts before, and that surprised me. One easy way to tell cheap (or free downloadable) fonts from properly drawn typefaces is by looking at the kerning pairs in use. Professionally produced faces have had their kerning pairs fined-tuned by font designers. The huge space in version five between the "A" and "Y" in "HAYMAKERS" is indicative of an inexpensive typeface without font metrics that would normally include character widths and kerning pair information. Regardless of the origin of the font, that gap should have been optically adjusted by the designer long before I ever saw it. Typography 101. Visually, the symbol used in version five is the most appealing to my eye. However, it's also the least original design on the page. Based upon the same convention of a silhouetted figure splitting a red and blue field as Major League Baseball's and the NBA's logos, this illustration also shares a good deal formally with the aforementioned Women’s Flat Track Derby Association mark.

If I were forced to move forward with any of these designs, it would probably be with a revised version of one of the original illustrations with much improved typography. Perhaps removing the bratwurst from the right hand of the skater in version four would improve it significantly. Perhaps not. Either way, caveat emptor on paying for a logo package that features six discrete variations, especially when four of the six are as interchangeable as these.

If your were even remotely involved in the online design community three years ago, it would have been impossible to ignore the firestorm of blogging brimstone and treacle that was launched at—and defended against by—Logoworks in 2005. Rather than retell the entire saga blow-by-blow, I will point you to a few of the existing sites that somehow seemed to weather what I understand was a storm of cease-and-desist letters: here, here and right here. On April 24, 2007, HP announced it had acquired Arteis, "a privately held company that operates Logoworks, a leading distributed web-based graphic design service provider." This was big news in the blogosphere, as many of Logoworks critics felt this legitimized what they considered less-than-honest business practices regarding authorship in identity design. Regardless of where your opinions may lie on this subject, Logoworks is the biggest player in this business space, boasting over 100 employees, 45,000+ customers and a 98 percent satisfaction rate on their about us page. Why choose Logoworks over their competition? Here are 10 reasons, including a few comical tidbits from that page I couldn't help but call out:

• The other guys: Most design companies expect you to go to them for multiple meetings, or they flat out ignore you.
• Then there are ad agencies that require time-consuming live meetings, where you are charged for their time.
• Some design companies are limited to a small in-house design team, or do not have any freelance designers. If they cannot afford a large team in both areas, they limit their creativity and flexibility.

I direct the small in-house design team here at id29, and I can say unequivocally that the last statement above couldn't be farther from the truth. Increasing staff size limits flexibility on almost every level in a design firm, and employing a large global stable of freelancers is a sure way to dilute your design process, not increase your creativity. As far as our need to actually meet clients face-to-face, we are guilty as charged. We operate under the somewhat antiquated notion that actually getting to know our clients might help us better understand their communications needs, and, as a result, do a better job defining and articulating their message in an engaging and compelling way. Crazy, I know.

I've spent $526 to date so far in this competition, and in my quest to keep the budget under $1000 total, I selected Logoworks' $299 Silver Package: four original logo concepts, two designers, two logo revisions and zero time-consuming live meetings. To Logoworks credit, their process for obtaining relevant client information before beginning the design process is much more thorough than their competition. No doubt being the industry leader has helped them hone this process to a point that minimizes false starts and client complaints, and maximizes their customer satisfaction rate. That's just good business.

Once my payment cleared, I was directed to their "7-question wizard" which is a well-developed series of web pages created to collect as much information about my visual preferences as possible. The questions are richly illustrated, and lead the customer through a series of tests, such as: Color wheels designed to gauge preferences, typographic samples which offer different font styles (serif, sans serif or script, etc...) and a 'logo traits' page which asked me to make preferential selections from a series of paired logos, such as Mountain Dew (youthful) vs. Coca-Cola (traditional/classic.) After about 10 minutes, the "wizard" determined my rollerderby club's profile to be a "strong, confident and sophisticated business." Sophisticated? Perfect, if I were TAG Heuer or BMW.

Logoworks critique:
Oy! After investing a solid ten minutes with the wizard, I expected much more from the initial round of marks from Logoworks. I'm having a hard time imagining how anyone could defend any aspect of these designs as strong, confident or sophisticated. After I praised their online briefing process, the designers at Logoworks apparently decided to abandon those survey results altogether. Version one features a childlike untied roller skate, that would look more at home in Disney/Pixar's Cars than it would on the back of a rollerderby uniform. Version two looks a lot like LogoBee's version 5 (above,) but not nearly as well drawn. The use of black is a welcome addition to this convention, but the red-stroked exterior circle effectively kills the dynamic created by the figure's negative space extending out of its circular bounds. Questionable typographic choices in these first two versions are made worse by the wrong hierarchy altogether in the nomenclature. The emphasis should be placed on "Troy Haymakers," not "Flat Track Derby." Somebody didn't get the memo. Fortunately, versions three and four got the club name correct as "hierarchy one," and "Troy Haymakers" is read first. Unfortunately, versions three and four exist. Like any Olympic competition, to the victors goes the hardware—however, there's no room on the medal platform for Logoworks this time around.

Closing Ceremonies:
There's a brilliant interview from 1993 with former NEXT Chairman, Steve Jobs on working with Paul Rand to design the NEXT identity. Paul Rand was a master of semiotics, and an iconic American identity designer until his death in 1996. Jobs asked Rand if he would come up with a few options. Rand replied, "No. I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me...if you want options, go talk to other people." Jobs goes on to describe the "refreshing" clarity with which Rand spoke of the designer-client relationship—it was obvious that he had given this subject deep thought for many years.

It would be unfair to compare the designs above with the work of Paul Rand, but what interested me in the interview was how Rand's singular method to solving NEXT's identity problem was totally at odds with how these online logo companies approach the same situation. Rather than focusing on clearly understanding the client's business and needs, the general solution put forth seems to be simply providing more and more sketches until something visually clicks—or the client's budget is depleted.

For smaller groups or organizations with extremely tight purse strings, these companies might provide some level of solution to their quick identity needs. They might find themselves redesigning in a year or two, but hopefully they've been successful enough in twelve months time to budget another $199 for identity design. A better approach for businesses in this situation would be to contact their local AIGA chapter, and inquire about freelance designers (or even student members.) Sitting down with a graphic designer and outlining your business' history, objectives and aspirations usually doesn't take a full-day working session. For $825—the amount I spent above—a single solution that was original and spoke to my demographic in an engaging and memorable way would be well worth it. As far as the pending demise of identity design as we know it caused by online logo companies taking over the world, note to working designers currently reading this: Don't quit your day jobs.

Doug Bartow is a founding Principal and the Design Director of id29, conveniently located above the brewpub on the Hudson River in historic downtown Troy, NY. id29 has been meeting face-to-face with happy clients since 2003, and has done identity work for AOL-founder Steve Case, Scholastic's Harry Potter, Pitney Bowes and MASS MoCA to name a few. You can send general greetings—or cease-and-desist letters—to doug@id29.com ::

C / No. 49 / RJG / A lovely collection of horribly photoshopped squirrels.

A / No. 78 / Armin / Elliot Earls, the Artist in Residence of the 2D department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, has just designed eleven posters, for each of their departments, to serve as a catalog for the institution. Groovy.

A / No. 74 / Armin / The Collective Typeface Project is approximately 100 written samples overlaid to create a typeface that could represent a community.

A / No. 75 / Armin / Uni Watch looks at the U.S. Olympic Team's uniforms and wonders why no blue ever matches the U.S. flag's.

A / No. 80 / Armin / Did Cuil, the Google-killer search engine, pick the wrong name?

A / No. 1 / Armin / Clever print ad "The Most Dangerous Species in the Mediterranean" including the condom, the trash bag and the cigarette butt.

C / No. 51 / Mike / Great illustrations / Tshirt designs at Glennz.com

A / No. 85 / Armin / This is tasty: A Flickr set with scans of Ladislav Sutnar's How to Show Telephone Numbers On Letterheads, which was designed for Bell System around 1964. [Via ISO50]

C / No. 4 / Able Parris / August desktop is here. Is summer really almost over? :(

A / No. 77 / Armin / Related to nothing in particular: Dean Allen of Textism describes Jan Tshichold as a "shit-disturber of the highest order." We won't be quoting Mr. Allen for our book, but it sure captures the spirit of Tschichold's contribution to design.

C / No. 47 / DM / Love Leaf Press. Beautifully designed site and really great portfolio of bookbinding and letterpress printing. Enjoy.

C / No. 3 / Niki / Because bubble gum, chick lit book cover designs sell. Via Jezebel.

A / No. 76 / Armin / Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica, will next release the documentary Objectified. Dig the production stills. [Via Design Observer

C / No. 53 / Mig Reyes / Halo nerds love type, too.

C / No. 2 / Josh / I'm sure most designers would have liked the chance to find a portal to the brain of Tibor Kalman rather than John Malkovich. Additionally I'd have no problem working with this kind of freedom for food. M&Co delectable adverts for Restaurant Florent

"Because whales are so cute!" was the reply I heard a Greenpeace activist give when asked why she joined the environmental advocacy group. Cuteness has always been used to foster support for dire causes. Images of baby cows and pigs are a staple for animal welfare campaigns. Anti-poverty and hunger organizations feature cute, impoverished children in their television ads. Now cuteness is being used for another cause, perhaps the most important issue of the 21st century: environmentalism. Using cuteness, environmental propaganda casts nature as an innocent, helpless child in need of a guardian.

Cute animals are a fixture in environmental advocacy. News coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 tugged on heartstrings by focusing on helpless seals, otters and seabirds covered in oil. Cute dolphins and whales bolstered support for responsible commercial fishing practices and dolphin-safe tuna. Images of manatees injured by boat motors promote responsible boating. The latest use of the "save the planet to save cute animals" tactic has been Haagen Daaz's "Help the Honey Bees" campaign. Their web site illustrates the environmental harm caused by disappearing bee colonies with little honey bees holding placards with the slogans "Help us!" and "SOS".

A host of corporations have "cute-ified" their logos, turning to natural designs to green their public image. Plants are especially popular, symbolizing the growth of new ideas and strategies. The stodgy shield logo of BP (formally British Petroleum) has bloomed into a sunny green and yellow flower, shining brightly in television commercials with whistling gas pumps urging us "to make the day a little better". Agricultural biotech giant Monsanto has replaced its block "M" with a spry little vine. The new Greenlist labels on SC Johnson's household cleaners also have a cute, leafy vine.

Environmental awareness has been around for decades, but increasing alarm about global warming has put it on the forefront of the public mind. It is no longer only in the realm of hippies and tree huggers; the average American consumer can also be an environmentalist! But since the issue of environmentalism is so vast and complicated, many newcomers to the green movement may feel unsure about where they can start. Cuteness is an effective way to make novel, complicated ideas and technology easier to understand by taking away uncertainty and allowing empathy. For example, when introducing the iMac G3 in 1998, Apple focused on the computer's cuteness and ease of use rather than its technological capabilities. Television commercials playing the Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow" emphasized that the G3's rounded, approachable design came in a variety of bright colors. Similarly, the green movement is now focusing on easy, feel-good ways consumers can help the planet.

Small, low-effort contributions that help a larger cause can be a good way to get people to care about an issue, such as Donating $0.50 a day to help an impoverished child eat and go to school. Most people are busy with their jobs and families and don't wish to veer too much from their usual routines. Greening one's domestic situation and consumer choices can be a good place to start. Many of the shows on the Discovery Network's new all-environmental channel Planet Green focus on ways to do this: plant low-water use grass in your yard; buy produce from your local farmers market; install new insolated windows to reduce heating needs. You can save the planet from your own backyard.

This method of promoting environmentalism through small, homebound efforts is also popular because it works with the familiarity people have with domesticated nature. Home lawns, gardens and residential parks are seen as non-threatening portions of nature, easy to maintain and control — similar to pet dogs and cats. This familiarity and reliance on humans evokes feelings of empathy. People can relate more to nature when it's cute little flowers and butterflies, not hurricanes or tornadoes or the avian flu.

Is it helpful to the green movement to gain attention for the cause by focusing on the cute parts of nature? It's easy to sympathize with polar bears in danger from melting glaciers, but not necessarily the microbes or fungi that make up the majority of life on the planet- and can have a bigger impact on the environment if threatened by global warming. Cute-ifying environmentalism can help newcomers understand the movement's goals, but it can also simplify and minimize the very real threat of environmental destruction.

While people may feel good buying a green laundry detergent with a picture of a cute tree on the bottle, it plays into the very consumerism that is causing environmental destruction. It may be a good place to start, but people then have to be educated about the effects their choices have on the environment, and what more they can do to help. It is also important to alert consumers to "greenwashing", masking environmentally-unfriendly practices with a green public face.

Ultimately, environmentalism may benefit from cuteness. It can reduce the apprehension this large, scary issue generates, offering people a sense of hope: If we all work together, we can fix it. Just like Apple was "the computer for the rest of us", cuteness can be used to make the most important issue of the 21st century more palatable for everyone.

Nicole Peterson is a recent graduate from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. "A Brighter, Cuter Future" is part of her on-going research project Design Benign, studying how cuteness is used in contemporary design culture.

Shown below are the finalists and honorable mentions — the lucky winners will be announced on August 14th in New York (and everyone is invited), with a gallery showcase and ceremony, that typically attracts the full local design industry in honoring these young students. In some cases I have made comments and annotations. And for everyone that didn't make it into this final round, please know that it was a very competitive context and that it takes really exceptional pieces to be selected.

As usual, the images here barely begin to make justice of the work. Some images come from ADAA, others come from the designer's web site. Enjoy, I sure did.

Stefan Ruetz
Corporate Design / EURO SCENE LEIPZIG
University of Applied Sciences in Mainz
Charlotte Schröner, Instructor

This was one of my favorite typeset pieces, it had the right balance of classic, irreverent and dynamic that it stood out for me from the rest of the entries. The book-within-a-book trope was well played too. You can see the full project at Stefan's here.

Jakyoung Min
Spending Time
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Stephen Farrell and Ann Tyler, Instructors

For this one I unfortunately don't have all the images; the first one is the one that resembles the feel of the whole project. It was some sort of information translation, but all I remember was some sweet Helvetica, carefully arranged, and lots of yellow and black.

Minsun Eo
Minsun Eo 2007
Kookmin University
Jae-Hyouk Sung, Instructor

It was hard to make heads or tails out of this poster, but they sure were some hypnotic and awesome heads and tails to be confused about. Front and back shown.

Yangseop Joo
Children are not guilty
Kookmin University
Prof. Hoseop Yoon, Instructor

It wasn't until the end that we all finally looked at this poster that had been quietly hanging on a wall. Despite a complex illustration, the poster never jumped out, but we could all agree that in its simplicity and starkness it spoke volumes. I was a little bummed that just a few days earlier I had seen these ads, using a very similar concept, so I had a hard time separating this from the others.

Gretchen Nash
Dear Gretchen
California Institute of the Arts
Gail Swanlund, Instructor

This was a 400-page book, or more. It was all about the life of Gretchen and the hundreds of things that her life revolves around. I am typically turned off by introspective projects where the designer unveils all there is to know about them in some sort of clever book form. Yet Dear Gretchen was fabulously paced and put together. My favorite ten or so spreads from the whole show was a chapter in which Gretchen made charts with paper and photographed (you can see some of those below) — they were the most clever and original interpretation of a common design element.

Paul Grabowski
TDC NY on the DRUPA 2008
University of Applied Sciences Wuerzburg-Schweinfurt
Prof. Christoph Barth, Instructor

One of the first posters that drew immediate attention was this luscious announcement of the TDC show coming to Düsseldorf. From afar it looks like feathers and richly ornamented, but it is all made with letters. Painfully placed, rotated and scaled letters. Pretty amazing. The images below, including the details underneat the full poster, can be clicked to see bigger.

Stefan Bräutigam
Overnewsed but uninformed
University of Applied Sciences in Mainz
Prof. Philipp Pape, Instructor

Like many designers I know, I'm a sucker for information graphics. They just look damn cool. And Stefan's oversized newsprint piece delivered all the infoporn necessary to service the heat. Perfectly and imaginatively typeset and laid out, with a dash of white ink silkscreen to add to the effect, this piece was a crowd favorite. You can see the full project here.

Ken Meier & David Yun
No Independent Thought
Yale University
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Instructor

On screen these posters look pretty under whelming, but at real size and playing optical tricks with your eyes, they proved to be irresistible.

Annie Chen
Home
California College of the Arts
Prof. Michael Vanderbyl, Instructor

I hate to admit it, but I can't remember seeing this piece. Sorry. It's not that I didn't like it or it didn't make an impression, I just, literally can't remember ever holding it in my hands.

Kyong Eun Kim
KMUVCD Graduation Show 2007
Kookmin University
Jae-Hyouk Sung, Instructor

At first I wasn't too thrilled about this piece, it just felt like someone had unloaded a box of flyers and bound them with a rod. Rebeca Mendez made me appreciate it. As a graduation show brochure, Kyong asked fellow graduates to design a page of the brochure at different sizes and then bound all of them together, allowing the reader to take it apart and see it as a whole or in pieces and then put it back together as desired; it had nice interactivity.

John Passafiume
(Process)
Indiana University Bloomington
Not listed, Instructor

This poster, no one could keep their eyes off of it. It was entirely set by hand, and every square inch had something new to discover. The combination of the hand-drawn with the strict grid makes for a grand texture. It's one of those posters that works when you see it from afar, then as you get closer and, like few posters, it also works when your nose is pressed sorely against it as you try to see every detail.

Click on the images below for bigger views.

Many thanks to Daniela Birch for all her help in getting a lot of these images ready, as well as for managing the balmy judging day and all the work that came before and after it.

Obnoxious is the Word It for August.

With that said, please read the specifications for submittal, where we tell you what kind of file we need, the size requirements*, naming conventions and how to provide us with your desired linkage**.

A / No. 61 / Armin / Logos that look alike.

A / No. 68 / Armin / Check out this retro Snickers bar package spotted at Walmart.

A / No. 34 / Armin / A nice collection of free typefaces offered by Spanish magazine Neo2. Click on "Aceptar" to reveal the download link. [Via TypeNeu]

C / No. 45 / Becky / A beautifully simple and stunningly designed game by Jenova Chen for her MFA Thesis.

C / No. 44 / Mig Reyes / Doodle your way through today's news.

A / No. 63 / Armin / Ambiblog features the process of making those mind-bending ambigrams.

A / No. 67 / Armin / Obama goes all Neue Typographie with this flyer for his visit to Berlin. [Via The Daily Heller]

A / No. 54 / Armin / The "How Tie," instructions included. [Via Design You Trust]

A / No. 52 / Armin / An invitation to design a classless capital K. [Via Manystuff]

A / No. 64 / Armin / Metro logos of the world unite! [Via VIBE]

C / No. 43 / LG / Ed Lives Here is a website that launched last week. I love the Ed series (very cool paper promotion) and was excited to see it online. :) "Ed has delivered technical advice on all things printing; coatings, inks, retouching, prepress, embossing and more. Above all, Ed is here to help you understand the amazing things you can do with paper, and how to improve the work you do with it."

A / No. 57 / Joe Marianek / Secret #4 "Protecting Obama's public image at all costs." The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder on Obama's oft-overlooked (brand) management secrets. [Thanks to Michael Bierut]

A / No. 55 / Armin / For Stanley Kubrick fans: "This stunning promo was shot in one long take, and is a look behind the scences of Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining, all from the perspective of the director himself […] even shot using the directors favourite lens." Well worth a look.

A / No. 56 / Armin / Wow, check out PicLens, a pretty cool image viewer, in a vertiginous 3d interface, that can display image searches from all across the web. It's an add-on that works on Firefox and the next-to-latest version of Safari.

A / No. 66 / Armin / Recession is for losers as these upcoming magazines prove there is a big market of the priviledged.