Viewing entries tagged
typography

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Personal Logo, Take 2

Earlier, I showed Take 1 for a personal logo, which was supposed to be modeled after a Chinese chop (although it looked more like a baby block). After some consideration, I decided that I needed something cleaner. I needed a slogan, too, especially as that was part of the assignment for my Computers and the Arts class (FA2000). As my "chop" looked a little sloppy, I decided to go with just typography. After all, lots of companies has excellent, type-only logos:

See? Works just fine. Also, I thought the forest green that I used on the last try would work well so I decided to go with a bright, flat orange with gray accents. I also needed a nifty slogan. As I decided to do something with data science (which is, after all, one of the reasons I'm here at the U of u) and as I'm trying to be arty and accessible, I tried "The Art of Data Science." Has a nice ring, doesn't it? Also, that phrase has not been copyrighted or used very much, so it can be distinctive.

Soooo, after much hand kerning, here are four variations on the same theme, from simple to complex. (The "BP.c" is short for BartonPoulson.com, by the way. Also, the light gray boxes around all of these is something that WordPress puts on there so you know it's an image file and you can click on it. Those are not part of the logo but the darker gray boxes are.)

Oooh, nice! Personally, I like the third one best because of the way it highlights elements in the slogan. On the other hand, the BP.c could use some explanation, so the fourth is a good one.

I'm pretty happy with these. Next, I get to design an actual web site that uses my fancy new logo. Exciting!

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My Old Friend, Design

Today in FA3000, Design for the Web, we talked about general principles of design. It was nice to see references to research – know your audience, what they want, how they use computers and the web – and to functionalism – know the purpose of your web site and work to meet it for your intended audience. Both very refreshing. But what was really nice was having a quick (about 10 minutes each) overview of design, especially color theory and typography.

I took a color theory class back when I was an undergraduate Industrial Design student at BYU back in 1985. (That coincided with the time when I generally didn't go to my classes, so things didn't go quite as well as one would have hoped. Oops.) Nevertheless, I had my color cards and I could talk harmonies at least for a little while. I may not have my Pantone stack anymore, but I did have an interesting déjà vu experience last year while attending a conference on computer science, of all things. Actually, it wasn't so shocking because it was VisWeek, the data visualization conference (which was, conveniently, in Salt Lake City last year) and so there was, in fact, a big turn out for the talk on color theory. I learned all about the differences between RGB and CMYK color systems (basically, screens vs. print) and the incompatibilities that exist between them. The speaker... oh, wait! I took the notes on my computer! Let me look them up... Ah, the speaker was Theresa-Marie Rhyne and her personal web page is called Theresa-Marie Rhyne's Viewpoint (and it's at http://web.me.com/tmrhyne/Theresa-Marie_Rhynes_Viewpoint/Welcome.html, at least until Apple shuts down MobileMe next year). She talked about RGB and CMYK, as well as the Munsell system (which I believe is the basis of the HSB – Hue, Saturation, and Brightness – model, although Munsell used the terms Hue, Value, and Chroma; and in which the color orange did not exist, just "red-yellow"), and the Pantone system. (I also just looked up Munsell in Wikipedia and found a huge number of color systems; more systematic coverage is at the article "List of color spaces and their uses".)

Okay, so lots of color theory available. Here are several online color tools mentioned by Martin (my FA2000 and FA3000 teacher – Hi, Martin!), Theresa-Marie, or things I found on my own:

I also have some nifty color apps on my iPod Touch:

And there's a lot to say about fonts, too, but it's late and I'm getting tired. For right now, I'll just mention a few other apps I have that are wonderful:

Lovely stuff. By the way, I just found out that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple (although he IS staying on as Chairman). Who knows what that will mean for the Apple faithful like me. We'll see.

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