Wordle is a cool new application that lets you take any text — whether it's a few words or a whole essay — and turn it into a tag cloud. I'm partial to this color scheme, but there are several to choose from, as well as a bunch of fonts and a handful of different layouts.
I'm having *so* much fun with this. Here's my bio, taken directly from the LaunchPad Coworking business plan, as it appears in Wordle. (click on the image for a larger view)
You gotta admit, I ended up with one ugly shirt.
Don't get me wrong. I love this idea. I love new ideas that use technology in some interesting way, even if starts out as something silly or useless. Reactee is one of those cool ideas. There's a lot of potential here, but in this incarnation it needs some more work.
I'm pretty sure I first read about these shirts on Gizmodo. I immediately wondered if I should reserve the namespace for any of my various ventures (I like to make sure my potential businesses have properly named accounts on google, twitter, typepad, yahoo, etc.) After all, you just never know which of these new applications will stick.
Rather than impulsively buying a bunch of shirts, it seemed wise to test one first. I decided to go with my version of the LOLCats meme (my second choice shirt was "I can has 2 many cheezeburgers").
When you buy a shirt, your chosen word goes live. Tori got one too, and of course we immediately started texting each other's shirts. Sadly, once you get the reply from someone's shirt, there's nowhere to go. You can't reply again - you haven't opened a thread. All those folks who got shirts saying things like "Want to date me?" will be awfully disappointed.
On the other hand, I suppose a coffee shop, for example, could have all their employees wear "need a buzz?" shirts and respond with something different each day. Parents could have their little kids wear a shirt with "text my mom if I'm lost" on their shirts.
What else should be textable? Pet collars, physical mailboxes, your car ("the left lane is for passing, dude")?
That's supposed to say 2012. And the Olympic Committee paid £400,000 for this. Even the folks behind the logo aren't committed to it. According to the brand launch site:
Available in four colours – pink, blue, green and orange - the new emblem is modern and will be dynamic, evolving in the years between now and 2012.
I never thought I'd utter these words, but in this case, I'd opt for creation over evolution. They need to start over.
I so want these lights! (From A design school project @ NY Design Week.)
I'm up in Waukesha, Wisconsin visiting my family. Both parents have been in the hospital while I'm here, so I've spent a fair amount of time at Waukesha Memorial Hospital. A couple of blocks from the hospital, there's the most surprising home. There was a 675,000 gallon water reservoir that had become quite an eyesore. Judy Fuller bought it for $1,000 and transformed it into a beautiful home in a "South Flordia" style. Indeed, it looks like it should be shaded with Palm trees and and have a path leading to white sand and crystal blue waters. It's 4 stories high, has 24" thick walls (which would keep out the sound of sirens), underground parking, and a "plaza" on the roof. It's already at a pretty high point in the town, so I'm guessing it has pretty great views. It has an estimated value of about $1.3 million. And it's for sale. If I were considering moving back to the frozen north, I'd be very tempted.
Apparently she's known for turning architectural atrocities into gems. What a great idea! Here's the Before picture.
Really, what is Adobe thinking?
This third set of logos (click to enlarge to 1200 x 900) are much more polished then set one or set two. There's still a bit too frequent use of the rounded sans serif fonts, and perhaps a couple seem overly simple, but there's some good thought behind many of these marks. When I look at these logos as a group, and try to identify what "the look" is, I'm struck by the fact that print is simply not the big issue it used to be. Some of these logos may never see print beyond a business card. Most don't need single color versions. It's not that they don't work in print, it's that these logos are meant to look good on the screen.
For the first two posts, I created a Jules Says logo in the style of the featured logos. I thought I'd do it for part three as well, but of course coming up with something really compelling and workable isn't simple. The other two I whipped out in a matter of 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe I'll get inspired and do a "real" logo for myself one day, but it's not going to happen in time for this post.
Observations on this batch: I like the Magnolia logo - it's got a very unique feel, and I think it actually would translate into print very nicely. And I have to admit I like the little creatures of Adium, Mochikit, and Reddit. I'm a little tired of the small, generic people as logos.
I cannot absolutely confirm that these are all web 2.0 companies - I got carried away just perusing all the logos that are starting to look the same, and, in this case, are pretty much cop-outs. Web 2.0 logos, part 1, focused on the many logos - wordmarks, really - out there using rounded and/or outline fonts. There are plenty of those in this batch too. Now we've added some simple graphical elements, too.
There are sound waves, and the talk bubbles. Squares. Circles. Lots and lots of circles. Built-in typographic elements like asterisks and stars. Some of these logos are nearly identical. Del.icio.us, Foopad, and Tilika have the same four-square pattern. Strmz and xanga not only use the same number of squares, there are even similar colors. And what about mozy and orange? Hope neither are in the market for a trademark.
I've noticed there are several “web 2.0 logo builders” out there now, too. That's gotta really piss off a lot of designers... I whipped out this Jules Says mark in Fireworks in a couple of minutes.
Click this image to enlarge it to 1188 x 821.
I understand that many firms, especially startups, can't afford to spring for a design firm to come up with a brilliant logo for them right out of the gate. There's a lot of laziness here, though, and certainly not much that's memorable.
Update:
Web 2.0 logos, part 3
