branding « Blog

September 20, 2009

Losing logo brands to acquisition

With the recent announcement of Omniture’s acquisition by Adobe, I’m reminded of how many of the brands I’ve created over the past 10 years that have disappeared by being bought-out and absorbed by larger companies.

Here are some of the logos I’ve designed that are either soon to be no more (e.g. Omniture) and others that only live in my portfolio:

	Omniture Inc Entered into a definitive agreement for Adobe to acquire Omniture in a transaction valued at approximately $1.8 billion in Q4 2009. Omniture, Inc. is a leading provider of online business optimization software, enabling customers to manage and enhance online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives.
	Powerschool Inc Acquired by Apple Computer for $62 million in Apple stock in March 2001. Powerschool is the leading provider of web-based student information systems for K-12 schools and school districts. It’s online software gives school administrators and teachers the ability to easily and cost-effectively manage student records and gives parents real-time access to track their children’s progress.
	SkyDisc Acquired by Skymall Inc for $2.3 million of SkyMall common stock in October 1999. Disc Publishing’s “SkyDisc” is an interactive CD-ROM targeted to the business traveler that integrates highquality print, broadcast and online media designed to provide a mix of topics that entertain, inform and enhance the business travelers’ life. Every other month a new “issue” of SkyDisc is available free in airline seatback pockets to more than 400,000 SkyWest Airlines passengers.
	Serus LLC Acquired by Netopia, Inc for $3 million in cash and 409,556 shares of common stock in December 1998. Serus LLC, developer of Java-based web site development and web page editing technologies including its “SplashSite” web site builder.

While I’m sad to see my brands go, I’m excited to see the companies that they helped to gain enough attention to get acquired.

September 2, 2009

5 years ago, a look back at logo trends

We’ve long passed the half-way point of 2009 (only 4 months left), and I was curious at how trends predicted for this year in logo design were panning out. After looking at an article on LogoLounge.com talking about 2009 Logo trends, I noticed links back to their previous years trend predictions. So I clicked on 2004 (5 years ago) and looked through the samples.

Surprised to see many of these past trends are still current, I thought, ‘I should blog this’. So here’s the first part in my series of logo trends from the past. Are these concept still current or just that, trends of the past? Old is new?

2004 Logo Trends from LogoLounge

	Glassine Glass-like or crystal-capped		Bubbles Representing motion, clean and refreshing
	Dialog Boxes Word balloons and speech bubbles		Substitutions Swapping letters for other font elements
	Letter Bars Stripes of a different color		Implied Letting the user get involved with the design by telling part of the story
	Universal People Giving a meaningless symbol meaning		Handmade The antithesis to computer-rendered design
	Arm Sight Human-like figure with arms up		Human Nature Human and environmental concerns
	Cave Rings Control of chaos through consecutive circles		Particle Fields Grid or repeating dots
	Prism Greater use of translucency, colors		Mezzotint Handcrafted, non-corporate, textured look

How big is glassine these days? And did the handmade look ever go anywhere?

All of this content was summarized from Logolounge.com. For many more samples, and better explanations (with credit who created the logos) visit their 2004 Logo Trends page.

July 19, 2008

My Bloglines – links to branding, design and usability resources

For those of you who don’t know what Bloglines is, you might as well go and check out the link. But in short, it allows you a one stop place to monitor all your RSS feeds. There are a quite a few tools that do this (even your portals like Yahoo and Google), but this one was the first one I was introduced to, and you know how that goes. (They won me!) Which one do you use?

But it seems lately that I’ve clicked so many of those “Keep New” boxes that I get overwhelmed with posts I want to read further into every time I go to see the new ones. So I thought I’d post the links here. (I’m moving quickly today, so I’ll have to put little one-liners to go with them later.)

But hey! You got a new post. (Something that’s been lacking for a while from the Daily Brad… uh, Yearly Brad is more like it.) I do have a excuse, as my latest project of flipping a house has kept my creative interests outside of work “offline”.

Here’s the links:

Branding:

Design

Usability

Now my Bloglines looks much cleaner, but with the links here I can refer to some of my “come back and look at later” articles. Thanks to the websites who’ve put these together (you can notice that there are quite a few that come from the same websites.)

January 22, 2008

Logo on ice – Omniture holiday party

Another first happened for me at the Omniture holiday party last month. While the party itself was another great event filled with awards, music, dancing, food and general merryment, I think one of my favorite parts was seeing my handy-work on ice.

At the entry doors to the party stood an ice sculpture of Omniture’s logo, flanked in the rear by green lights. Since this was a Brad McCall first (Having a logo I designed carved in ice), I thought I’d mention it in my blog and post a couple photos.

Watch Omniture this year… it’s going to continue to great things!

November 30, 2006

Zensterz logo design

Here’s a logo I recently finished for Zensterz. (The URL won’t really go anywhere right now as the official site won’t launch for another couple months.)

Click image to view larger

Zensterz is a subscription-based online portal where family groups can share events, coordinate activities, brag about recent trips or promotions, etc. They can do all this within a password-protected site that’s packed with Web 2.0 features (ie Software-like functionality). There’s more to Zensterz which I can’t talk about (which gives it an extra punch to stand out in a fairly crowded space of “family websites”), since it’s still under wraps for the time-being, so you’ll have to be on hold until it goes live.

The selected concept that was taken to completion was based on and illustration of two individuals (one green, the other orange) who are conversing through the letter “Z”. The blue circle and relative roundness of the shape behind them represent the wrapping of the two individuals from around the globe where they arrive at the “Z” (representing zensterz) that is made from the negative space from their faces. I used an all-lowercase version of the font Gill Sans, to emphasize the ending of zensterz (with a “Z”). Gill Sans has always seemed like a “friendly” font with its mixed chunkiness, but still have a professional appeal. Seemed appropriate.

Blog

Losing logo brands to acquisition

5 years ago, a look back at logo trends

My Bloglines – links to branding, design and usability resources

Logo on ice – Omniture holiday party

Zensterz logo design

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