I want to put a logo design theory in my BA thesis.
The best way to combine it with design work was creating series of infographics.
I paid attention to logo evolution - how and why it changes in time and what determined these changes.
I designed 6 infographics, each of them with a different part of subject: basic info, history, characteristics, psychology of colour, rebranding in practice and evolution of good known company logos in Poland.
Infographics were printed in B1 and presented as posters at my university.
But what you see when you hear evolution?
Of course - Darwin's evolution theory. Every infographic's background is the ocean - place, where life was born. It's reference to beginning of history, to fundamentals - just like theory is fundamental of logo design. Blue color of background support concentration while you read the text. For creative medium I used silhouettes from wildlife.
#1 Logo DNA
Basic information about logo - what it is, who use it and where we can meet it. All types of logos - typographic, like glyphs and monograms, and graphic - abstract, illustrated and others. Definitions of branding, rebranding, brand book and brand identity. Introduction to the subject.
#2 History of logo
From first cave art in El Castillo to the Internet era. 22 important milestones in trademark design, like first symbols, identity of Roman flags, heraldics, the invention of the printing press, classical trademark projects and others. The best option from wildlife to illustrate timeline was nautilus shell.
#3 Characteristics of a good logo
10 characteristics describing a good logo from Jack Gernsheimer's book. Legible, relevant, conceptual, sophisticated, distinctive, memorable, enduring, versatile, attractive and cohesive. To illustrate them, I chose 10 present trademarks and compared they to their old versions, to show the specific evolution. Here I create a form of medusa, with words as tentacles.
#4 Colour in logo
Psychology of colour is one of the most important part in logo design. In this infographic nine fishes represent ten colours, with many examples of logos. In every short text I tell about association, symbolism and influence of colour.
#5 Rebranding
I chose 5 Polish companies with not good logos in my opinion and I created them new trademarks. I also present previous versions with dates when they were made. That way, I show evolutions of logos in each company, where I am the creator of last form. I used a starfish silhouette to this project.
#6 Evolution of logos
6 companies and evolution of their logos. 5 of them are from Poland and have a long tradition. I compared them to the Shell logo changes to show differences in design over the years. To find all versions of trademarks, I did research and often I had to make vector image based on low quality raster picture. I also created ten icons-animals in the order of Darwin's evolution.
