LogoDesign.org » George Ryan

Everything you ever wanted in a computer chair. And then some.

George Ryan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:33:38 +0000

I ran across this incredibly awesome computer chair / bed earlier today. It has all the bells and whistles, including specially placed pillows to distribute your body weight, armrests that support both arms and a monitor mount that gives you a great view of your screen. It even looks sort of like one of those Imperial Speeder Bikes from Return of the Jedi, which just adds to the coolness.

The downside to it is that even if you were still able to buy one (the manufacturers website does not appear to exist anymore) it would apparently cost you in the neighborhood of $4500. Which may be too much to spend on a chair. Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Official French “Anti Piracy Squad” Caught Pirating

George Ryan — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:34:57 +0000

Everyone makes mistakes. I get that. But every once in a while a group or orginization makes such a stupid mistake that it sets them apart from all other people who make mistakes. The most current “oopsy” in the design field, and one that definitely needs to be talked about, is by Hapodi, the official french orginization that is responsible for the countries harsh new anti-piracy program (if someone you live with is accused of three acts of infringement, your whole household is taken offline and added to a list of address to which it is illegal to provide Internet access).

Hapodi’s snaffu occured when it debuted it’s new logo, not only is the logo truly ugly, it also uses a copyrighted font created by an employee of France Telecom in 2000, designer Jean-François Porchez.

Now, this font isn’t part of the regular “pay a fee to use it” font libraries, it is a completely unqiue, custom creation that is only supposed to be used by France Telecom, as Writer Julien L from French news site Numerama explains:

“The problem is, this font was an ‘exclusive corporate typeface’. It couldn’t be used for other purposes than France Telecom/Orange products,”

That’s a big mistake!

Hadopi has issued an official apology.

Now the real question is, if they get caught two more times, will the agency lose it’s internet access?

Expedia Fails Horribly In Rebranding Attempt

George Ryan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:13:22 +0000

Launched in ’95, Expedia arrived on the online travel booking scene to give some competition to rival Travelocity (1995) and eventually put all independent travel agents out of work. Although I have never personally used Expedia, can’t even say for sure that I have been to their site, I can say that I do immediately recognize their logo, a cool little plane swooping around a 3d globe.

At least I used to be able to recognize it, until they made the decision to ‘blandify’ it by flattening the whole design and slapping a little clipart looking plane in place of the cool one we have all come to love. Now, I know that there is always resistance whenever a brand changes up it’s look, and usually it is just people not wanting to lose something they have formed a (somewhat) emotional attachment to, but I really think that, looking at the rebranding objectively, that it is a HORRIBLE move on Expedia’s part.

Paul Leonard, VP of brand marketing at Expedia, attempted to explain the reason for the change:

“We were striving for a more timeless and classic aesthetic,” he said. “It’s a little less whimsical and more sophisticated.”
— Seattle Times Article

The complete lack of anything interesting in the new logo is not the only problem with it. It is a really, really close imitation of Hotwire’s (an Expedia owned company) existing logo. So much for originality.

Photoshopped Ads Banned In England

George Ryan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:40:34 +0000

When the model “Twiggy” appeared in a series of Olay ads looking much younger than her 59 years, and claiming that the product she was advertising, “Definitely Eye Cream”, was responsible for the changes, people started crying foul.

Turn out that in addition to adding the phrases “Olay is my secret to brighter-looking eyes” and “Because younger-looking eyes never go out of fashion…[it] reduces the look of wrinkles and dark circles for brighter, younger-looking eyes.” to the ad, the artists at Olay also did some “minor retouching” of the skin around Twiggy’s face, in effect creating the very same changes that the product was supposed to be responsible for.

According to the Guardian, the U.K’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received hundreds of complaints from the public, claiming the Olay images were “socially irresponsible” and could have a “negative impact on people’s perceptions of their own body image”.

After much deliberation the ASA came to the conclusion that the ads should be banned, stating that altering the image gave a “misleading impression of the effect the product could achieve.”

Photoshop: helping to sell the snake oil of the 21st century.

Sculpting with dust. Yes, that’s right, dust.

George Ryan — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:19:28 +0000

Paul Hazelton is an artist. But unlike most artists he works with a very uncommon medium. Dust.

Hazelton collects the dust from places where it tends to congregate, such as window sills and furniture, and then gets the dust wet, shapes it, and carefully dries it.

He credits his hobby to the fact that he was brought up in a spotless environment, his latest creation is a full bedroom, with a bed, bookshelf, tv, wardrobe and armchair.

He was also recently featured in an article on Metro UK and will have some of his creations on display in New York this Christmas.

You could get sued for using the Google logo on your site!

George Ryan — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:44:55 +0000

Google has announced that it is in the process of suing several of those “Make Money at Home With Google!” sites that anyone attempting to “get rich quick” is sure to have run across in the search results.

Among the complaints listed in the lawsuit was the fact that many of those sites use the Google logo without permission. From Google’s blog post on the subject:

You may have seen offers like these using Google’s name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are, and, despite hundreds of consumer complaints and our own efforts to keep these sites from tricking people, some scams continue. To fight back, we’re working to stop various fraudulent “Google Money” schemes, and this week filed suit against Pacific WebWorks and several other unnamed defendants.

Now obviously the problem is that these sites were pretending to BE Google, or at the very least pretending to be authorized by Google, when in fact they were not.

Now if you are using the Google logo on your site in an appropriate, non-commercial way (as it is used in this blog post), you should not have anything to worry about (I think?). It should, however, serve as a warning to anyone that uses the Google logo on their commercial site, especially if your are selling SEO services, to make sure that it is VERY clear that you are not in any way affiliated with Google.

Read more about the lawsuit over at the Official Google Blog.

Get Thee Behind Me: The Client From Hell

George Ryan — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:33:37 +0000

We’ve all had them. Those clients who are so crazy unreasonable that you are tempted to give up freelancing completely and go drop an application off at Burger King.

A website I found the other day, Clients From Hell, has taken upon themselves the monstrous job of collecting and categorizing records of some of the worst.

Below are a few of my favorites from their site, although I had to stop reading after a little while as the craziness was starting to get me in a bad mood.

Enjoy! (sort of):

RENOVATING DESIGN:

I had been working with a client since Feburary creating a full identity package. After countless teeth pulling sessions and geting the greens “just right” we were ready to print in September. I get a call from her saying “I put a stop payment on my cheque because we want to get some renovations done on the house”.

TESTY TESTER:

After developing a custom e-commerce site we received an irate phone call from the client on the day of the launch…

“We’ve been hacked!” he shouted down the phone, “How could you let this happen?”

“Why do you think you’ve been hacked?”

“There’s an order right here and no payment!”

“Who’s the customer?”

“It says ‘Mr Testy Tester, 1 Test Street, Testville’… It’s clearly a hoax order!”

“Do you think we might have been testing the site?”

“Oh, I see…”

GOOGLES:

CLIENT: “Make sure you tell the Googles of the world that the site will be launching soon so it places high in their results.”

I have a feeling I am going to be borrowing this next guys line sometime in the near future:

Prospective client: $400 for a logo?! Why are you so expensive? My nephew has Photoshop—I can just get him to do it.
Me: Does your nephew have Microsoft Word?
Prospective client: Yes.
Me: Then have him write you a novel while he’s at it.

And one for the road..

www.bill AT att.com

Client’s 70-ish year old father storms into boardroom during our first meeting brandishing a sheaf of papers—all print outs of Google search results, covered in highlighter and red circles.
Him: “I want to know the meaning of this!”

Me: “I’m sorry? The meaning of…Google?”

Him: “NO! I want to know why our website is not listed here! HOW ARE PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO FIND OUR PHONE NUMBER?!”

Me: “Um…you’ve just hired us to start building you a website, sir. You don’t actually have a website at the moment.”

Him: “YES I DO! My granddaughter writes to me every week! www.bill AT xxxxxxx.com!”

Me: “Ah, right. Yes, that’s your email address, sir.”

Him: “Look at this! These are all our competitors! Why are THEY on here? I search OUR name and THEY are on here!!!”

Me: “Again, you don’t actually have a website yet. We are going to build you a website so that you WILL be listed in Google.”

Him: “Listed in Google?! What are you talking about? Who do I call to get www.bill AT xxxxxx.com listed in Google?!”

Me: “Ah, it doesn’t quite work that way sir. You’ll need an actual website first, and that’s what we’re here to do.”

Him: “I already told you that we HAVE a website. Good choice, son. This lady clearly doesn’t have a CLUE what she’s talking about.”

I ended the meeting and left right then.

They seem to be updating it on a daily basis so be sure to check out Clients From Hell.

5 Totally Wearable Pieces Of Art

George Ryan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:23:05 +0000

I love wearing cool shirts, and one of my all time favorite sites to find new shirts is DesignByHumans, an site where some of the most talented designers around create really cool designs. Below are some of my favorite designs, several of which I own.

NOTE: This is a completely unsolicited post, I am not being paid anything by DBH, I’m just a HUGE fan.

Blackbird’s Attackin’ in the Dead ‘O’ Night

by shantyshawn

Umibozu

by thestray

TREE

by oliver

Journey to the City of No Horizon

by TangYauHoong

Red Riding Hood

by shantyshawn

Google beta-testing new logo and site design

George Ryan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:01:54 +0000

Google is currently beta-testing a new logo and some changes to the results page.

To see the changes yourself first go to http://www.google.com

..and then copy and paste the following into the browser bar and hit return:
javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

The new design, as seen below, makes some updates to the style of the logo and makes considerable use of the color blue.

There have also been some changes to the results page:

We’ll see if this actually goes anywhere…

15 Deeply Disturbing Photoshop Manipulations

George Ryan — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:16:11 +0000

There are many incredible things you can do with Photoshop, such as editing your weird neighbor out of the background of the only picture from the family reunion that everyone was smiling in. There are also some very creepy things that can be achieved with the program, such as having someone look like they are punching their own face into a void of nothingness.

Here is a collection of some of the Photoshop image hacks that have left me with a knot in my stomach and a vague feeling of uncertainty. Enjoy.

1. “Face Vs. Fist” by Erik Johansson via VillageOfJoy

2. “Sushi Mermaid” by Petrosini via 1stWebdesigner.com

3. “Human Displacement“ via behance.net

4. by Matias Argés

5. by Matias Argés

6. “Hero“ by Cristiano Siqueira

7. “The Downside of Shredding” by Erik Johansson via VillageOfJoy

8. via Yeeta.com

9. “Voices” by echoburst

10. “Pumpkin Warrior” by Zurhorst

11. via Yeeta.com