A logo for Prime: My Ideal Programming Language

So . . . any link to this project to revolutionize computer hardware & software ?

We see color gradients every day now across van wraps, billboards and other print media.
But you are the GD expert - maybe you can see a real snag ahead.
But red is all wrong for this. Especially in the western hemisphere where its connotations are usually negative. Different story in Asia.

Yeh I wouldn’t listen to tamjam - they are clueless and have no idea about design.

Working on a docs on Gitbook. Haven’t published it yet. It’s not complete.

Have you seen my latest version of the logo? I’ve ditched the red montain version long ago. But thanks for participating. :slight_smile:

Yes, but those are all instances that lend themselves to continuous-tone color printing. There are plenty of other applications where that’s not the case, for example…

  • A promotional item, such as a water bottle or a pen
  • A screen-printed t-shirt
  • Cut from vinyl
  • Etched into glass
  • A B&W receipt
  • A product insert
  • Anything that’s foil stamped, embossed, or engraved
  • Anything confined to spot colors
  • Any container that’s pad printed
  • A backlit storefront sign
  • An embroidered hat

I could go on listing dozens more instances, but the point is a logo needs to be flexible enough to accommodate many different situations that might arise down the road — everything from full color to one color.

Red might or might not have the appropriate personality for @Unlimiter’s logo. However, there are no negative connotations to red in the Western Hemisphere. I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, but the following organizations, among many others, apparently didn’t get the message.

  • Coca-Cola
  • Canon
  • The BBC
  • CNN
  • The Red Cross
  • Toyota
  • Adobe
  • Netflix
  • McDonald’s
  • Pizza Hut
  • KFC
  • Canada (the country)
  • Target (the retail store chain)
  • Ace Hardware
  • The Rolling Stones
  • Lego
  • Nintendo
  • Exxon
  • Virgin
  • YouTube
  • Time Magazine
  • K-mart
  • Pinterest
  • Apple Music
  • Heinz
  • Texaco
  • Wendy’s
  • Nikon
  • Staples
  • Avis
  • Levi’s
  • The U.S. Republican Party
  • Cardinal Health
  • Arsenal FC
  • Manchester United FC
  • Kellogg’s

And then there’s my high school, my university, and the ad agency where I worked. Of course, none of this is surprising since red is probably the second most popular corporate color — right behind various shades of blue.

Yes. Kinda edgy :slightly_smiling_face:

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Exactly! Tech is edgy after all.

@Just-B:

Sure there are single color media.
But - correct me if I’m wrong - isn’t it the case that a logo design involves producing a range of logo variants including B&W, monotone, icon, negative space, etc and in various file types ?
So doing the full color version doesn’t ever stop the job.

Some say design itself should be edgy :grinning:

Anyway there’s no point in being an author without naming rights or an entrepreneur without exercising your branding vision.
Buona fortuna.

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Edgy… boring

Both the same in tech :smiley:

As you’ve found out (based on your other thread), most clients don’t start out with budgets covering everything. In those instances, providing a client with a logo that’s adaptable enough to work in future situations is important.

When a budget-conscious start-up needs a logo and is mostly thinking in terms of a brochure and a website, a logical place to begin might be with a full-color logo. However, while designing that logo, a designer needs to keep in mind that the full-color logo must be adaptable enough to work in one color when the time comes (and it always does) when a full-color logo isn’t appropriate for one reason or another.

A good example of this problem is ebay’s old logo (left). There are seven colors. It’s a nice-looking logo, and it worked well for digital displays and four-color process printing. However, for B&W or spot colors, it was a disaster. When converted to black (not grayscale), the overlapping shapes made the logo unreadable and ugly. When printed with spot colors instead of process colors (as logos often are), seven separate runs through a press were required with custom ink mixes. Even in those instances where practical solutions existed, doing so was often expensive and complicated.

The newer logo (right) is much simpler. It only uses four spot colors, doesn’t depend on a simulated transparency effect, and is still readable when printed in black and white. It’s more generic than the logo that came before, but it’s still recognizable and is far more economical, flexible, and practical.

image

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There are plenty of logos that don’t meet the criteria and are outside ‘designer’ reign.

eBay looks like Google and vice versa.

There are differences.

Do all logos need to be amazing - printable - etc.?

No. They don’t need to be. But they are!

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In addition to the things others have said regarding this matter on both this and your other thread, there is another factor to consider which governs the complexity vs simplicity of a successful logo.

Bear with, me, this is probably going to get a bit grandiose and seemingly irrelevant before I get to where I’m headed …

Humans always seek to rationalise the increasingly complex. On one hand, we are hard-wired to progress and improve. This comes with it, an inevitable complexity. To counter this, and help us understand the world, on the other hand, we strive constantly to describe the complex in concise ways. Take, for example, e=mc2 devised to describe the behaviour of atomic matter – and the search continues to improve on this and describe sub-atomic matter in a similar, efficient and simple way; we search for a Grand Unified Theory and onwards to a Theory of Everything – well; I don’t, personally. I’m just happy if I can remember where I left my shoes.

We are uncomfortable with loose ends, things that are not neatly rounded off, packaged up. Entropy is an anathema. We have a need to understand the world around us in convenient patterns. We are hard-wired to find pattern and commonality. Patterns (of behaviour) helped humans survive (but that’s an entire other avenue all of its own, so I will stay away from that particular rabbit hole). Why do we look for pictures in clouds?

A logo is exactly all this; the simple, used to describe the complex. [Phew, I got there in the end…]

The whole point of a logo is that eventually, once a company or organisation has established its brand identity and created the necessary emotional connection with its audience, the logo becomes a simple visual mnemonic employed to contain it all. The neat mental package. Think, Nike, Apple, BBC, etc. You have an immediate mental ‘speed dial’ to all of that emotional capital and information you have learned (or rather, been fed) about them over the years. The more complex a logo, the less effective this mental process. Speed dials are pointless if you are required to remember a long number code to access them.

Also, there’s a reason it’s call a ‘brand’.

Of course, practically, you need to produce variations for logo usage, but the fewer of these required, the better. You should always start simple. Things will, necessarily, become more complex as any brand grows and progresses. If you start with the already over-complicated, you will trip yourself, and your client, up and, ironically, end up negating effectiveness of the job the logo is supposed to do.

Entropy reigns.

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@sprout

Your knowledge of physics is as sketchy as mine of GD.
But I take your point.

Indeed; but, then again, I am not selling my skills as a physicist.

As the moderately honored recipient of a worthless Associate Degree in physics (before changing my major to graphic design), I’ll use my less-than-lofty credentials to agree with @sprout; entropy does, indeed, reign supreme.

So you are saying that a more detailed base logo (B&W in positive space) would lead to a greater complexity once color was introduced ?

Yes. But, like it or not, the ubiquity of color design plus printing tools and the almost automatic expectation of attractive design by consumers today has made this extra entropy a must.

The dictum of less being more sums it up reasonably well.

Good design typically depends more on subtraction than addition. Decorating one’s way out of a design problem rarely works. Instead, the solution more often involves carving away what isn’t needed to expose the essence of the idea.

Even so, there’s certainly room for color and complexity when it’s warranted and not primarily gratuitous. The most successful, practical, and memorable logos, however, are almost always simple and straightforward.

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