The Donut Project

This is a great video of showing the process and research of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic brand. The video also features comments from the late Leo Obstbaum, who was the design director of the project.

See our post on the Vancouver Olympic Medals which eventually was born from the design process in this video.

Flaunt, the newest publication from Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit, the co-founders of UnderConsideration LLC, is a manual to assembling your next portfolio.

The book features beautiful examples of portfolios with explanations of technique and price along with graphs that show what your first email should contain to a prospective employer, to how many pieces should be in your digital portfolio. This book looks beautiful in both the information that it contains and also in how it is presented.

As a soon to be graduate with a portfolio show upcoming, I already have placed my order for the book. You can preorder the book for a Feb 22 ship date ($25), or buy a downloadable PDF immediately ($15). Go and check it out at www.underconsideration.com/flaunt .

As you can tell, I’ve been needing a lot of color in my life as the days here grow greyer and greyer. Doe-Eyed, the studio of Eric Nyffeler, gave me just that! I love the posters and logo work and even though the site is a little wonky to navigate, it’s totally worth the visit. See more of his work here and perk up your dreary Friday, too!

Featuring the letterheads of some of the world’s biggest names and companies from now and (mostly) then. See them all at Letterheady, and be on the lookout for Hitler’s letterhead!

(Top: M.J. Winkler, 1925; Bottom: The Tonight Show Featuring Johnny Carson)

Check out this absolutely delicious identity for A Cowboy’s Dream, a luxury bed & breakfast in Nevada. This is what happens when you let a designer (designed by KURO Interactive) with taste work magic, with what I assume to be a huge budget :).

See all the pieces here. The A Cowboy’s Dream website is also quite nice.

(via Design*Sponge)

A short movie about the brand and design development for a San Francisco chocolate company, TCHO by Edenspiekermann.

Charles S. Anderson Design Company, est. 1989, and (America’s favorite small family-owned paper mill) French Paper Company, est. 1871, have worked together to create one of the best-known paper brands in the country. French have distilled over 20 years of remarkable promotions into a 3 1/2 minute movie.

If you want to watch tons of promotional pieces, all of which are cooler than anything you’ve ever made, check it out.

According to the Daily Mail, Kellogg’s cereal is going to begin testing a way to laser-etch their logo onto each individual corn flake they sell. They believe this will help solidify their brand even further and reiterate that imitators are just that, imitators. Is this a smart way for a premium brand to differentiate itself from the pack? Or is this just dumb and unnecessary? What do you think?

Read the entire story at the Daily Mail.

iStockphoto announced yesterday that they would begin selling logos on their site, in addition to their popular, cheap stock photography.

The logos will sell for 100-750 credits, and each logo can be sold only once. Designers will initially receive 50% royalty, with this policy to change after six months. Credits range from $0.95 to $1.50 depending on how many you buy at a time… meaning logos can cost as little as $95 and max out at $1,125 (although the max price is based on the inefficient purchase of 12 credits at a time until you have 750+ credits, so real world situations won’t go over $1,000).

To get great photography, we hire great photographers to create specific images for us, and logo design is no different. But now, like stock photography, stock logos are becoming mainstream. The consumer attitude of “good enough” is spreading like wildfire.

iStockphoto (owned by Getty images) is in business to make money. Period. So it’s difficult to blame them. Sure, it’s unethical (this can be argued for stock photography as well), but really, they exist to make money, just like the tons of other crowdsourcing logo sites on the web. So where does the blame fall for this new trend?

These sites rely on a number of designers to submit work with no guarantee of pay. Designers seemingly line up around the block at the chance of being paid less than market value for their generic-one-logo-fits-all design. I blame these designers for allowing themselves to be taken advantage of, and lowering the perception of our field to millions of potential customers. Sure, this client perspective won’t hurt Pentagram or Landor, but your average neighborhood designer may see some wallet-crunching by their mom & pop shop clients.

When it comes to crowdsourcing, the responsibility falls solely on designers to stand up and say NO. As long as there are thousands of designers submitting to these sites, they will continue to thrive. I personally vow to no longer associate myself with designers who undervalue our industry by allowing themselves to be taken advantage of as style-whores… and I encourage/challenge you to stand up, have a backbone, and do the same.

It’s simple. Crowdsourcing can’t thrive if there’s no crowd to source.

Let iStockphoto know that we don’t appreciate this through the forum they made this announcement here.

I’ve been listening to these lectures for the School of Visual Arts via iTunes U and I found this one that I thought was definitely worth sharing. I’ve been fascinated from the beginning of Obama’s campaign at how well he created a cohesive image, a brand for himself, and I believe whole-heartedly that it had an influence on his election. Bush, on the other hand, was a hot mess. His beveled, mismatched type faces and drop shadows haunt my dreams. Steven Heller talks about Bush’s design tactics, vision and mishaps in his lecture for SVA and lets you decide for yourself. The video is only 9 minutes, so it’s worth a look! It’s a great comparison to our current president, but to warn you, it may give you nightmares. Font nightmares. Download the video here and check out more of Steven Heller’s lectures for SVA as well.