National Logo Redesign

The past logos of DC Comics.

DC Comics seems to make a habit of changing their logo constantly.  From 1940-2005 there have been nine changes to their logo.  This seems like a little too many to me, but DC doesn't seem to care because in 2012 they chose to yet again change their logo.  Behold, the most controversial DC Comics logo change yet:

The DC Comics new logo.

The new logo was a way to complement their complete overhaul of their comics (they rebooted 52 of their most well known comics back at issue #1 dubbing it the "New 52") and give them an interactive logo that would work in the digital space.  The logo is one that features a peel back design kind of like turning a new page.  The logo is also created with the Gotham Bold typeface, which cracked me up because Batman lives in Gotham and is one of their leading franchises and all (a part of me really hopes that was done on purpose and not just sheer coincidence).  The Senior Vice President of Franchise Management, Amit Desai, suggested the new logo's imagery reflected the nature of DC characters as individuals with dual identities.  "When you think about our DC Comics superheroes, there's a secret identity," he said. "When you think about Vertigo, it's this notion of good vs. evil in many of the stories. And so, in addition to flexibility, the new logo communicates this idea of dual identity: There's more than meets the eye. You have to take a closer look to understand the richness of our characters and stories."

Different versions of the logo for different characters.

 The logo has been implemented all across DC's different heroes and forms of media.  Movies show the D first then feature the peel back animation revealing the C under it and digital comics allow a peeling motion to be used also.  It is pretty neat to see the use of it with different characters that I have come across on some websites.  Overall I think it works but it is a silly logo design.  The interactive element works well and makes sense but as far as the usage on print media, I find it lacking.  The only way for it to work on print media is the inclusion of the word "DC Comics" right under it as shown in pictures.  That seems like a failure to me if your logo can't stand by itself, but compared to other comic logos the new DC design stands up surprisingly well and is a much more modern look.  The only big problem I find with it is it could be taken for other things.  One graphic designer's critique went so far as to say, "The Ugly: Things the logo also sort of looks like: A ripped condom being removed from a wrapper. A large sticker being pulled off of a toilet seat cover."  Now that I have read that, the image cannot be unseen.

Sources:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/19/new-dc-logo-images-interactive/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/18/dc-comics-logo-design-critique/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/17/dc-comics-logo-history/
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/dc-new-logo/

Newspaper Ad

Create an advertisement for the PSU Collegio Newspaper. Your topic should be appropriate for newspaper advertising. You must use the formula above to determine the size of your ad, and to make sure it falls withing your allotted budget. Remember, there is a big difference between inches and column inches. All newspaper publications are designed on a column width system. You have flexibility with the height of your ad, but not your width

See Blog Assignment for criteria
Formula to determine your cost. This will also  indicate the size of your ad. Be sure to indicate the size of your InDesign document as well.

1. 5 thumbnails
2. 1 rough that matches your formula; either  vertical, horizontal, or square
3. Target Audience (identified by age, race,  gender, education level, socioeconomic status, marital status, special  interests, etc)
4. Call to Action | What you want the recipient to do
   
   • go to a personal url
   • call a phone number
   • walk in the store/business
   • use a coupon
   • email

 Specifications:

• no bleeds,
• minimum of .125 margins
• Black and white only, no color

 The newspaper ad I have decided to design is for a fictional website called beagamer.com.  The design I'm making is going to have gaming based images with a witty slogan to try to coerce people to play video games and visit the website for more info.

My target audience will be gamers and people just looking for a new activity.  This will most likely fall into the category of people between 10-30 years old.  I cut off at the thirty because after 30, if you aren't already a gamer, you probably don't care.  The whole thing I'm trying to do is make a catchy phrase to be used to entice anyone to game.  The phrase is based off of seeing t-shirts that say things like "I was told to get a life.  I'm a gamer.  I have lots of lives," but making it sound less like a rebuttal for being teased.

The call to action for this ad is having people visit the website and play video games whether they are already a gamer or want to be

The budget for this ad is $197.  I decided to make a 5 column in x 6 in ad.  5x6x$4= $120 for the ad cost.  That's 9.67x6 for the InDesign file.

The rough.

The thumbnails.

The final product.

Note: I did not use a Bitmap in this project.  I used mine on our first notepad project so I'll talk about that.  The picture I uploaded for a bitmap was a drawing I did of my thick, black rimmed glasses.  Since bitmaps are hand drawn scans, they end up looking as such.  They aren't clean looking like an Illustrator file but that ends up giving them a certain kind of charm.  Every fiber of my being was irritated that I couldn't draw proportional glasses and wanted to fix them somehow but I just left them alone and let the little flaws of my drawing add something special to the notepad design.  To give the glasses a stronger black I used threshold on them and that made them standout strong.  It can be seen in my past blog post.  I guess I was an over achiever knocking that one out first.

All images were created by me and the Spy Agency font was a free to use font from dafont.com. Here is the url to the font if needed: http://www.dafont.com/spy-agency.font .

QR Code Research

QR stands for quick response so a QR code is a quick response code, mostly named for the fact that it can be scanned and identified by a phone quickly and efficiently.  QR Codes are trademark two-dimensional barcodes.  They have become increasingly popular recently because of their fast readability and large storage capacity compared to other similar kinds of barcodes.  The code consists of black squares shaped in a square pattern on a black background.  Each QR Code generated is unique and is kind of like a form of identification.

There are a plethora of QR Code generating websites that are easy to use, like http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ for example.  All that must be done is entering some kind of URL, text, phone number, sms, etc. and the website will generate a QR Code for it.  As far as tracking the code, certain sites, like Blogger for example, offer ways to tell where your visitors are coming from.  If your website is visited from your QR Code, you should be able to see it in the statistics.

QR Codes are quickly becoming more popular because of house easy they are to use and integrate into a design.  They are popping up everywhere in magazines, on billboards, posters and even more.  It is actually a clever way to produce traffic to your website or something along those lines.  Say you've created a design and wish to advertise that you made it or perhaps link to more info about the design, simply slap a QR Code on there and it can be scanned so people can be accessing your site in seconds.  This would work for any manner of ads or business cards.  It is great for advertising of any sort. 

INFO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code
http://blog.redclayinteractive.com/how-to-track-qr-codes-in-google-analytics/
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/static/about
http://searchengineland.com/what-is-a-qr-code-and-why-do-you-need-one-27588

Copyright Basics for Designers

Copyright is a hard subject for graphic designers. Copyright is basically the exclusive right of the author of a creative work to control the copying of that work.  There are lots of subtleties but that is the gist of it.  Images, content, fonts, and intellectual property belong to the creator or whatever company the creator made it for.  Works don't necessarily need a copyright notice to be copyrighted.  In the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not.  For default, you should assume that people's work is copyrighted and should not be reproduced unless you know otherwise by means of a copyright notice and the parameters included within the notice.  If at all possible, it is easiest to just create your own new work and avoid the hassle of copyright laws.

Most of my information on copyright was found from these two sites given to me in my Document Design class: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html and http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html