Craftsman Logos

There are many ways in which we recognise company logos, when we see them on TV, billboard signs and advertisements in newspapers and magazines but for smaller companies these large advertisement campaigns cost just too much but there are other ways to advertise your company and get your logo recognised.

You can use t-shirt printing to create a walking advertisement for your staff, with a uniform featuring your company logo, using t-shirts, polo shirts, hoodies and fleeces for your staff to wear both in and out of work. Choosing a comfortable style of clothing means your staff will be much more at ease and find the clothing very practical, plus it takes out the daily task of choosing what to wear everyday and your staff will be much more appreciated if the clothing was supplied without cost to them.

It’s a good way to get your company recognised in the local area with staff walking out and about going to and from work and at break times advertising you.

Hot on the heels of its recent independence form Time Warner AOL or as it will now be know Aol., has been busy rebranding itself and has now launched it new logo which will be fully unveiled on the 10th December, a simple idea of a basic typeface which sees Aol. instead of AOL and then placing that on various interchangeable backgrounds like a goldfish, a skateboarder, a leaf, a head banging rocker and many, many more, this is the idea of consultancy firm Wolff Olins who have brought us such logos as the London 2010 Olympic Games and Product (RED).

The idea is to represent their new identity of been uniquely dynamic which they feel has been achieved by having the ever changing backgrounds but still keeping the Aol. logo itself consistent. The new logo and all the various versions of it will start to be shown from the evening of the 9th December to make sure they take full advantage of the spinoff from Time Warner. Aol. are hoping this logo revamp will revive the brand as of recent the company have suffered with a decline in its subscription service, advertising revenue, its work force and image.

Here are some examples of the new Aol. logos:

Ever wondered how the brands you know and love today, came up with the company logos? Most are aimed to encapsulate the target audience and for the majority of the well known companies, this has taken the best part of the 20^th Century to achieve.

It can be the things you see and use every day, from a make of car to the branding of your favorite drink. A lot of the logos have been developed to change with consumer markets over the years, like Volkswagen, who after World War Two decided to get rid of the design around the VW that likened to the Nazi flag. Recently companies have changed their logo to fit into the 21^st century, where more and more we are seeing things simplified but still recognisable like Nike and Pepsi  who have dropped their names from their logos and just opted to be know by their well known trademark symbols.

Some companies also alter their logos depending on what markets they are appealing to, for example if a company wants to aim at a more exclusive set of customers designs tend to be tailored to a style that is associated with them. A lot tend to use black as a main background colour with sharp writing and clear lines to set it apart from other service offered by the company.

No doubt as we get further into the 21^st Century styles will keep on evolving and no doubt so will the brands we know and love.

888 Ladies is an online bingo operator and it’s clear from their logo that they know their demographic. The original 888 logo is pretty familiar now from their sponsorship of sporting events, and the designers have resisted the urge to mess too dramatically with it – electing to use the same basic font and proportions to retain the family resemblance.

The most drastic change is obviously in the colour scheme – which uses a pretty, vivid pink and purple theme to good effect. The logo is given a prototypically ‘web 2.0′ effect with the addition of a gloss effect. Whilst this has been largely overdone in recent years it sits well on the site itself, which is chock full of chunky, shiny graphical buttons.

Another tradition carried on from the usual 888 logo is the strapline “enjoy the game”. Whilst logical, the use of a different colour set and the clearly very different target audience might, arguably, have been used to let the copywriters off the leash a bit and describe the bingo game more directly.

Overall, this is a pretty successful adaptation of an existing logo form.

888 Ladies Online Bingo