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Son of the Makeover Maven #9

© 2001 by Gary Priester. All Rights Reserved.

Helping David Karlins Put People on the Internet

To many of you readers, the name David Karlins will have a familiar ring. Like myself, David contributes high quality content to unleash.com. I thought the name had a familiar ring as well when I received the following makeover request:

Dear Son of the Makeover Maven

Your tutorials and articles at Unleash.com are great. I've plugged them in many of my own articles and tutorials at Unleash.com. Now I need help with my logo!

It's for PPINET.com, and the idea is to have it mesh with Putting people in the Internet.

Any ideas???

Eagerly,

David Karlins
(Well known author)

OK, I added the well know author bit. After visiting David's web site, I see that he has written a list of books longer than my arm, so of course the Makeover Maven's (Son of same) ego swelled with pride. How could I say no to a fellow content provider to this great site who has provided you readers with such a wealth of knowledge on Flash and other Web and Corel-related subjects.

I should point out that while David's URL is ppinet.com as in Putting People in the Internet, you can see by the logo he sent me, that the text reads Putting People On the Internet. This could prove confusing to persons with literal minds such as mine, but I quibble. I think you will agree, when you reach the end of this article. that I nailed the makeover assignment, but not before some considerable metaphorical throat clearing.

How does one communicate people, and remain PC (politically correct)? Good question. I created a simple person like symbol which found its way into many of my preliminary explorations, such as this first example. The person symbol also took on the appearance of an arrow, which I arranged in a circle with all the heads together. I replaced the bottom center symbol with an i as in Internet. The font is VAG Rounded.

I replaced the circular heads with monitor shapes and added a jaunty script font called GMNanagramTT, a font found to excess on Daniel Will Harris's efuse.com site.

For the heck of it, and because I was getting nowhere fast with this person symbol, I tried linking the symbols together like cutout paper dolls. Then I flipped every other symbol upside down. A dotted line connects all the symbols together. Even the drop shadow didn't help me here. I was getting desperate!

Then I remembered something that I tell you folks all the time: Look for symbols, or visual devices, that relate to the particular product, service, or company. In this case the Internet, which for most of us visually-oriented people, means the Web. So I used the mouse pointer to drag my symbol figure onto a simplified screen. I was getting somewhere, but I remembered an e-mail message I received recently from a young lady whose boss complained about her excellent logo because it didn't photocopy very well-as if this was any criteria for judging a good logo! This logo would definitely not survive the Xerox machine test.

While the mouse pointer definitely says computer and computer screen, it does not necessarily say Internet, or more specifically, Web. But the hand cursor, which the pointer turns into as it passes over linked content, most assuredly does. Using another font recommended to me by Mr. Typography himself, Daniel Will Harris, called Craze, I created this simple logo design. The O, in PEOPLE, looked like a Web site button and the hand pointer, with a convenient drop shadow to pop it off the page, poised over the O suggested a one-click way to get people in, or on, take your pick, the Internet.

The typographic treatment was OK and I suppose I could have said I'm finished and gone down to the local watering hole for a celebratory libation. But then I would not be following my own advice which is to crank, crank, crank, and then crank some more. And after all that cranking, crank even more. In other words, don't get excited at your first good solution. Keep exploring until you run out of time or patience. I used a humorous font called Mini Pics Lil Folks, available from EyeWire.com, the wonderful folks who bought i/us.com then shut down the site at the first of the year. But this is not the appropriate axe to grind here. The multi-colored Lil Folks added a touch of whimsy to the design and made it more human, or inhuman as the case may be.

Then I thought, maybe the little Folk were a bit too whimsical-not serious enough. So I revisited my stick figure symbols, and changed the hand symbol to orange and positioned it over the center character. Then, as you can see, inspiration struck and I moved it to the left so as to appear to be dragging, finger to hand, the three figures onto the Internet. The font is Bernard MT Cond. I liked this design a bunch. I saved my file and shut down my computer for the night content that I had a winner.

When I looked at the collection of designs shown here, and several dozen more that did not make the final cut, the next morning, something was bothering me. The hand symbol was a terrific idea, and it definitely said Internet/Web, but I was not so sure about the symbol figures. They looked more like they belonged on a traffic warning sign, and not the Internet. Then it hit me, the ubiquitous smiley face. What says Internet more than the smiley? And at the same time, the smiley face says people. So I tried inserting it into the text, Microsoft's Courier New. This design would most definitely photocopy well. But something said, keep cranking, you're not done.

Next I tried a bunch of smiley faces using a variety of fonts. It created a kind of poster effect and communicated a range of people.

And then the right brain kicked in (it usually does if I can just get out of its way and let it do its thing). I took one of the smiley faces, the one using a font called Jokeman, available on the Corel CD or at EyeWire.com, and combined it with the hand symbol. As an afterthought, I added a diffused glow behind the smiley face to simulate the rollover button effect found on so many Web sites today. The text is Arial Regular. I made the text different colors because as I have said so often, life is not a contest to see how little color we can use.

The design is simple, it looks as good tiny as it does full size or larger. The logo is simple enough to work in one color as well as a dozen. Does it photocopy well? (When did the lowest common denominator become the standard of good logo design? That's what I want to know). Well the glow might become a bit mushy, but hey, no problem, if David is that concerned with photocopying his logo (somehow I don't think the Xerox is his medium), he can drop the glow.

Since David writes about Flash, what better than to have a Flash movie version of his logo. (If you can't see the logo you'll need to download the Flash 5 player for your Web browser). Flash is fun and works really well on the Internet. I think this is a pretty good logo for getting people onto the Internet!

This last logo design is definitely the winner don't you think? Agree? Disagree? All of the above? None of the above? Contact me in the Graphics Unleashed Forums and let me know your favorite. But before you do, isn't there a book or music CD you were going to buy? Remember, the content on this site may be free for you, but Foster has to pay David, and me, and the other sterling content providers on this site, with something other than his own hard-earned cash. Visit the Unleash Training Solutions page, or follow the link from this site to Amazon.com where you can find just about anything you might want to buy, including books.

See you next month (if Foster has any money left in the till).

Need Makeover?

Is your current logo an eyesore rather than a sight for sore eyes? Let the Makeover Maven (Son of same) have a peep at it. Send me your logo in GIF or JPEG file format and a brief explanation of why you feel your logo needs a makeover. I'll do my best to guide you in the right direction.

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