Sunday Stock: Sports Logos

I frequently hear of users trying to find logos of professional and college sports teams. One reason you don't see them sold as collections is that they require licensing fees to be used legally. I recently came across a site that has a wide variety of sports logos you can download for free. Many of them are vector, other come as good quality bitmaps. Point your browsers at Sports Logos Screensavers and download the logos you want. Just remember, licensing fees would be required to use them legally.

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Origins of the Peace Sign

I was reading National Geographic recently and came across the story of how the logo for the peace symbol originated. It was a bit of a surprise since I don't read it to get stories about graphic design.

After doing a bit more research, I realized the logo celebrated its 50th birthday this year. The logo was originally created in 1958 by Gerald Holtom for the Center for Nuclear Disarmament. Look at the diagram at right to see how the elements were developed. It is based on the letters N and D in the Semaphore alphabet. Note that the Semaphore font is supplied with CorelDRAW and was used to create the diagram at right. Each of the semaphore characters were simplified to give the two pie pieces. Those pieces were then combined to give the final logo that we all know so well. More details can be found on the happybirthdaypeace.com Web site.

I think this is a great example of how an artist thought outside the box a bit. Rather than using the letters in a Latin alphabet, he chose a symbol font and then simplified it greatly. In Britain the logo is commonly known as the disarmament symbol, but many of us outside Britain simply call it the peace symbol. Now you know how it was created. Hopefully this gives you some ideas for logo design!

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Free Logo CPR Webinar on March 7th

I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to attend a free Webinar that I'll be teaching next Friday, March 7th, 2008. The topic of the Webinar is Logo clean up strategies. I know a lot of you are tasked with the job of taking a scanned logo and converting it into a vector design. We'll go over a variety of techniques for manually re-creating these logos in the hour session.

It really is pretty simple to attend. Go to the Webinar page on the Smart Designs Web site. In the right hand column are a list of upcoming classes. As of now, the Logo clean up strategies session is listed at the top of the column. Click on Sign Up Here and fill out the form. Then join us next Friday for the Webinar. I look forward to "seeing" you all there!

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The Evolution of the Google Logo

I'm assuming that most of you are graphic designers. Thus, you are interested in how to create the best designs possible for your clients. Google went from nowhere to one of the most influential companies on the planet in ten years. But how was their logo born? The folks at Wired just ran an article on how the logo was created and you can see the iterations along the way. Their logo may not be the key to their success, but it is certainly one of the most recognizable logos in the world. Hopefully it can bring some inspiration to your projects.

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