I’m having a severe case of writer’s block!

John Williams has successfully convinced me on the guidelines to create a well-designed logo. He states, “Your logo reaches everyone who has any contact with you and is the first impression someone will have of your company. Because of its potential impact, your logo must offer a favorable impression of your business. Present yourself clearly and dynamically, and you’ll look like a pro, even if your is in your home’s basement.”

I find his words to be true. First impressions are extremely vital.

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5 Cardinal Rules of Logo Design

(from Entrepreneur.com)

Guidelines to create the best logo for your company.

1. Your logo should reflect your company in a unique and honest way.
What’s the overriding trait you want people to remember about your business? If it’s quick delivery, consider objects that connote speed, like wings or a clock. Consider an abstract symbol to convey a progressive approach–abstracts are a great choice for high-tech companies. Or maybe you simply want an object that represents the product or service you’re selling. Be clever, if you can, but not at the expense of being clear.

2. Avoid too much detail. [This one caught my interest]
Simple logos are recognized faster than complex ones. Strong lines and letters show up better than thin ones, and clean, simple logos reduce and enlarge much better than complicated ones.

But although your logo should be simple, it shouldn’t be simplistic. Good logos feature something unexpected or unique without being overdrawn. Look at the pros: McDonald’s, Nike, Prudential. Notice how their logos are simple yet compelling. Anyone who’s traveled by a McDonald’s with a hungry 4-year-old knows the power of a clean logo symbol.

3. Your logo should work well in black and white (one-color printing). [This, too]
If it doesn’t look good in black and white, it won’t look good it any color. Also keep in mind that printing costs for four-color logos are often greater than that for one- or two-color jobs).

4. Make sure your logo’s scalable.
It should be aesthetically pleasing in both small and large sizes, in a variety of mediums. A good rule of thumb is the “business card/billboard rule”: Your logo should look good on both.

5. Your logo should be artistically balanced.
The best way to explain this is that your logo should seem “balanced” to the eye–no one part should overpower the rest. Just as a painting would look odd if all the color and details were segregated in one corner, so do asymmetric logos. Color, line density and shape all affect a logo’s balance.

By understanding all those rules, generate a few concepts and based on those concepts, come up with several designs. Then decide and work on one final concept and design.

Last but not least (learned from this site), file types and formats should be prepared as follows:

• 1 x High res Tif for professional printing
• 1 x JPG in gray scale for trademark registration purposes
• 3 x JPG in RGB in 3 sizes (Normal, medium and small) for home/office printing or web use
• 1 x transparent PSD for professional web design use
• 1 x vector based .eps file (This is this fully editable master file) for professional printing and design work

He concluded that the best way to ensure logo longevity, in addition to the rules I’ve listed above, is to make sure you love your logo. Don’t ever settle for something half-baked. And the most important rule is to never, ever re-draw or alter your logo! If you want to animate it for your website, fine. But don’t change its essence. Reduce and enlarge it proportionally.

It opened my eyes the widest as compared to what I had learned in my academic years. This is probably a whole week’s lesson learned in a single article.

This site fascinates me:

Covers

It’s a site dedicated to the appreciation of book cover designs. A whole collection of book cover designs is displayed, and you can just browse through and feed your right-brain with inspirations.

Remarkable.

I’m in Singapore at the moment, working as an in-house freelancer at The Food Newsgazine company. My 3rd day today and I’m loving what I’ve done so far although the traveling to and from work is a pain. But the food here is great! Seriously!

So far, I’ve done some book-reviewing, a crabs restaurant’s newspaper advertisement and some pages for the newsgazine.

Yep, I’m having fun.

Here’s the Valentine’s Day card I created for Pierre.

I created a Valentine’s Day card for my boyfriend, Pierre. I haven’t been creating cards for him for a long time. I just thought I’d be creative about it this time. I’ll post the image of it when he receives the parcel :)

Oh by the way, Kathlyn has put up my favourite love story on http://blessedemon.kicks-ass.net. Oh, Cy Rimmon! Oh bliss!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! In love or not!

I’d like to do the honours of introducing a gifted young writer – who is a dear friend of mine and darling sister to my boyfriend – Kathlyn D’Souza. She writes love stories in a witty way you never thought you could put into words. Her writings will go deep into your soul and make you melt, gasp, laugh and cry. Her characters will stay inside your train of thought as you go about your daily routines. I dreamed about one of her characters once, no kidding, because the character was significantly heartfelt. I hope that one day she’ll succeed on getting her stories published. I’m behind you all the way, Kath.

If I had a wider vocabulary to describe her writings, I would pick the most suitable word for her but for now, any word that I would put to describe her now would only be an understatement. She has written more than 9 stories and completed 2, which one of them is now online.

Show some love by checking it out at http://love.thruhere.net.

p/s: Finish up My Blessed Demon quickly, Kath :)

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Oh and Happy Chinese New Year of the Rat! Gong Xi! Gong Xi!

I went for a job interview at Sri Pelancongan Pte. Ltd. (a subdiary of Sabah Tourism Board) for a Graphic Artist position on Monday. It went quite well. Though, I still have to wait for them to get back to me. Fingers crossed :)

Prior to the interview, they asked me to design a Christmas greeting card and a flyer for Sabah Fest 2008. I ended making a series of Christmas greeting cards that look nothing like a typical Christmas greeting card.

I figured that people would want something they want to keep – something memorable. So I made ornament-like greeting cards. I thought that instead of creating typical folding greeting cards, why not make something they’d hang on the Christmas tree instead of putting it away right after reading it or just pasting it on the wall for only one Christmas and forgetting ’bout it the next year? Might as well create something they’d store with the other Christmas decors and most probably would hang it on their tree the next year, too. Aye? Aye?

Seeing that they want a design to promote Sabah and their target audience would most probably be foreigners from four-season countries. The best way to portray Sabah during Christmas would be the sun since Summer is the best time of the year! A warm and sunny Christmas instead of a winter Christmas. I didn’t do the cliché Santa Claus, snow, candy cane and chimney thingy. Instead I picked our magnificent Mount Kinabalu, our sandy beaches, our rainforests and the ever-famous Orang Utan. More than enough to attract you to spend your Christmas in Sabah? :)

As for the Sabah Fest flyer, I didn’t and couldn’t find the details of this year’s event, nor did I know whether I was supposed to come up with a new logo. Though it did say “colourful” in its description, so I figured black would be the best way to bring out the colours in the photos. And since Sabah is known for its natural beauty, then green and yellow would be best to accompany the monochromic hue.

I apologise for the poor photo quality, I took it from last year’s Sabah Fest’s gallery. Don’t mind the second girl, either! But that was the best photo I found. The first girl looks lovely though :) I hope they bought my ideas though ’cause I put a lot of thought into it.

Wee! My new domain is up!

http://www.tatianalaban.com is up! *does a fiesta blow-out*

Now it’s officially launched.

I’d like to thank Luke, for giving me this idea of setting up my own blog/portfolio. To my dearest boyfriend Pierre, for helping me put this thing together. And to Shawn, Kathlyn, Caryn, Adrian and Julia for taking a sneak peek of what I’ve come up with.

I wish I had found this Christmas wallpaper by Roy Doty earlier. I love the detailed mechanics of it. I still find myself lost just figuring how it works.