Stop & Post February 2006!

**masque** · 31 January 2006, 03:29 PM

Very early stage of a picture I'm working on in between other 'stuff'.
Derek

**Simon Beck** · 31 January 2006, 03:58 PM

Here is a logo design that got signed off the other day. The company operates an employment database for mothers who want to work part-time, and they needed a logo which would emphasise the theme of people balancing work and childcare. Interestingly, they asked for a greyscale version as well as the colour and line-art ones I usually supply.

I actually made a model of the blocks (without the text) in 3D Studio Max, rendered an image and then traced the faces of the blocks by hand in XaraX. I used Contour and Inset Shape to produce the gaps between the shapes. After that I centred each text element in a square outline, and used the Mould/Perspective tool to fit the squares to the sides of each block. I then converted each mould to an editable object, ungrouped, deleted the outline of the square leaving just the correctly moulded text, and finally subtracted the text from its background, leaving a text-shaped hole. This ensures that there is no actual white when you export the final scaleable EPS.

**Soquili** · 31 January 2006, 04:26 PM

Derek - looks very interesting, and will be more so when you have it complete.

Simon - Very nice logo. It gives the subliminal message that using the service is very easy, as in child's play.

**Frank Edwards** · 01 February 2006, 09:49 PM

Hi,

A friend of mine is going freelance in the world of aviation technical services and he asked me to come up with some suggestions for logos and business card designs based around his company's name. He has no money and I have no training or experience, so it seemed like a fair trade.

Here are four of the examples I came up with - I hope they post ok as I'm pretty inexperienced at exporting to different file types.

Frank

**Soquili** · 01 February 2006, 11:52 PM

Hi Frank,

I'm not good at logos and not one who's advice on the subject is advisable to follow. My favorite is the one in the upper right.

**Simon Beck** · 02 February 2006, 12:12 AM

Here's yet another new font called "Blancmange" (a type of traditional English milk-pudding) on account of the jelly-mould appearance of some of the letters. The initial idea was to use only quarter-circles and unit squares without looking too Art-Deco. I solved this by allowing shapes to overlap where necessary.

You can download it here: http://www.alphabeck.co.uk/fonts/Blancmange.ttf

**Betina** · 02 February 2006, 06:20 AM

Hi
Have you made this in a Xara product?

Nice work to all!

**Simon Beck** · 02 February 2006, 08:05 AM

The letter shapes were produced entirely within XaraX and then exported to individual hi-res GIFs. The font itself was generated using High-Logic Font Creator 5.0 which has a very good auto-trace facility. Others may prefer to use Fontographer or even the font-creation facility within CorelDraw. Believe me, if Xara could come up with a font-creation facility I'd use it!

**stlewis** · 02 February 2006, 11:23 AM

Some metallic/grafitti treatments...

**Albacore** · 02 February 2006, 05:01 PM

Hi Frank,
Show all to your client. I think the two top ones do more for me than the lower.
I like the logo on the top left, it worls but when combined the way you have it, it loses the impact with the mixed fonts. The top left is clean and clever.