Time to give a shout out to another graphic designer out there.

In this case, my kudos go to Austin, TX-based designer, Karl Hebert. I first stumbled upon his work when I came across the business cards for Pattern Productions, an Austin-based television production company.  He created this while being on staff with Spoonbend.

What was nice about this logo and identity project was that the client had zero pre-conceived ideas for their logo.  They just liked the name “Pattern”.  So, Karl decided to pay homage to the days of TV test patterns and as you can see below, the result was a fantastic logo and even better concept for their business cards.

Karl now flies solo under the umbrella of Gold Lunchbox and now works in France.

Keep up the great work Karl!

For this logo, the concept of a classic Roman column helps to convey the foundation and stability that comes from the financial support as well as the prestige that was needed for this brand.  The tassel and grad cap on top of the column helps fuse the two elements and give this brand a very memorable and unique mark.

The focus is to present “The Survivor” as a fundraising event that celebrates individual perseverance over cancer and heart disease. The golf event is 100 holes played in one day by teams of 2 players. The participants are going to be “Survivors” of the grueling event (100 holes in less than 10 hours) and they are actively supporting and raising funds for Survivors of cancer and heart disease.

The event logo therefore needed embody the spirit of both cancer battle and heart disease, while conveying the sport of golf.

The result is below…

As a graphic designer, I love seeing package design or logos  for products evolve over time.

Recently, Sprite received yet another facelift, and I think for the better. The can of “limone” has recently gotten an upgrade to not only its overall can graphics, but the logotype and the graphic for the lemon-lime fusion.

What I find refreshing (sorry for any puns) about this is the use of the lime and lemon to create an “S” within the graphic out of its negative space.

I also find the new logotype to be fresh and contemporary.

Thanks to Steve Heller over at Print Magazine for bringing this evolution to light as well as providing the visual illustration.

Below are all of previous iterations of Sprite:

I found this logo on a designer’s gallery site and instantly loved it.  The simplicity, which is so crucial in logo design, is found in not only the rendering, but in the creative solution of utilizing the positive and negative space of the two bottles.  Add the clever use of orange triangles and you have the rocket.  Simple yet powerfully creative and communicative.

This little work was done by Michael Spitz, a graphic designer from Rijeka, Croatia.

When recently shopping for a new knife sharpener, I happened upon Chicago Cutlery. I was immediately taken back by its logo. The shape, choice of typeface, and modern illustration of a knife not only conveyed it quality and materials, but (and I apologize for the pun) it just looked SHARP!

When I decided to identify it on my blog as a logo worth noting, I stumbled upon the agency responsible for its makeover as well as noting that its package design is equally deserving praise and that it was awarded a Pentaward Silver for its excellence.

Lago (USA) is the agency that took Chicago Cutlery’s previous brand (pictured right) and, in my opinion, created a new logo for them that really is a cut above the competition (again, I apologize for the pun).

The award-winning packaging is clean and modern and I love how they incorporated actual food into the packaging as it helps to reinforce to the consumer how the product is used (which you may think doesn’t need visual explanation but helps unconsciously relate to the consumer).

Kudos Lago!

The simplicity and bold line-work of this logo is why I just LOVE it!

Great job guys…

The winner turned out to be J.D. Busche from Texas and in my opinion blew the competition out of the water. His entry outshined in creativity that of my entries and the other 1,000+ entries in this national competition.

Below is the winning photo…

Now if you are still thinking, what is the big deal, or what in the heck am I looking at, then take a look at the video J.D. also submitted to help explain his entry. WOW…

Veer Contest Submission from J.D. on Vimeo.

Recently, they ran a contest where a non-digitally enhanced photo was to be entered that re-created their logo. The entry could be sculpted, created, manufactured, whatever…. Just not created or composited using the computer.

The grand prize was about a new MacBook Pro, CS4 software, an entire library of fonts, and other merchandise that came to almost $8000 worth of prizes. In the end, over 1000 people entered and the results were amazing. Alas, my entries did not win, but I wanted to share with you my own entries.

My Entries

Having designed a few anniversary logos myself, I really appreciated their fresh approach to designing the “50″ in such a way as to incorporate the Hubble Space Telescope image of the “grand design” spiral galaxy M81 located 11.6 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major.. The use of Helvetica Neue for the “5″ nicely complements this planetary visage.