Friday 23 April 2010

Company Logo Designs

Here are my own company logo designs using Photoshop CS2.


I have experimented with various different fonts, designs and layouts. I was trying to demonstrate artistic creativity through each design, always remembering what the logo is trying to convey to the consumer and that the logo represents the activities of the company. I wanted the logos to stand out yet at the same time look slick and professional.

I have shown these designs to the group, and were well received. I think I prefer the Spark Studios name and design. However I think as a group we need to decide which design is best by having a group vote.

Concept Company Name Ideas

I came up with two initial names for our company which I have shown to the group. It was well received.

The names were:

Forge Studios

(The idea behind this name is that artistic design is created/forged).

Spark Studios

(The idea behind this name was that the word spark would be used in context with the phrase "bright spark" which suggests talent and innovative ideas).

Similar Company Ideas and Their Logo Designs



These are some logo designs for existing visual effects houses in Soho, London companies offering similar services. These images were found on the internet.

Cinesite.
Framestore.

Framestore: 

Framestore was founded in 1986 by Sharon Reed, William Sargent, Jonathan Hills, Mike Mcgee and Alison Turner. Starting with London's first application of computers for the creation of graphics and visual effects the company's work covered award winning imagery in commercials, music videos, television graphics and TV Drama to begin with. In 1994 its film visual effects department was set up.

The have been involved in partnership with The Computer Film Company (CFC) since 1997 which was one of the first digital film special effects companies. They have worked on projects such as Superman Returns, Batman: The Dark Knight, Avatar and Cash of the Titans.

Examples of Company Logos

This an image of a collection of numerous different well known company logo designs

Thursday 22 April 2010

Research: Marketing

Marketing is the process which companies determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It is an integral process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.

Marketing is used to identify the customer, to keep the customer, and satisfy the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that marketing management is one of the major components of business management. The evolution of marketing was caused due to mature markets and over-capacities in the last 2-3 centuries. Companies then shifted the focus from production to the costumer in order to stay profitable.

The term 'marketing concept' holds that achieving organisational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions. It proposes that in order to satisfy its organisational objectives, an organisation should anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than competitors.

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Research: Brand Salience

Brand salience measures the awareness of the brand. "To what extent is the brand top-of-mind and easily recalled or recognised? What types of cues or reminders are necessary?"

The tendency of a brand to be thought of in a buying situation is known as "brand salience". Brand Salience is "the propensity for a brand to be noticed and/or thought of in buying situations" and the higher the brand salience the higher it's market penetration and therefore its market share. Salience refers not to what customers think about brands but which ones they think about.

Brands which come to mind on an unaided basis are likely to be the brands in a customer's consideration set and thus have a higher probability of being purchased. Advertising weight and brand salience are cues to customers indicating which brands are popular, and customers have a tendency to buy popular brands. Also, an increase in the salience of one brand can actually inhibit recall of other brands, including brands otherwise would be candidates for purchase.

It is widely acknowledged that buyer's do not see their brand as being any different from other brands that are available. They buy a particular brand because they are more aware of it, not because it is more distinctive, or has a point of difference.

Research: Brand Awareness

Brand awareness refers to a customers' ability to recall and recognise the brand under different conditions and link to the brand name, logo, jingles etc to certain associations in memory. It helps the customers to understand to which product or service category the particular brand belongs to and what products and services are sold under the brand name. It also ensures that customers know which of their needs are satisfied by the brand through its products. A new term that has emerged in recent years known as "brand love" is a measurement of the level at which society regards a company or product.

Research: Brand Manager/ Management

Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase the product's perceived value to the customer and thereby increase
brand franchise and brand equity. Marketers see a brand as an implied promise that the level of quality people have come to expect from a brand will continue with future purchases of the same product. This may increase sales by making a comparison with competing products more favorable. It may also enable the manufacturer to charge more for the product. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the manufacturer. This can result from combination of increased sales and increased price, and/ or reduced cost of goods sold, and/ or reduced or more efficient marketing investment. All of these enhancements may improve the profitability of a brand, and thus, "Brand Managers" often carry line-management accountability for a brand's P&L (Profit & Loss) profitability, in contrast to marketing staff manager roles, which are allocated budgets from above, to manage and execute. In this regard, Brand Management is often viewed in orginisations as a broader and more strategic role than Marketing alone.

  • First impressions count. The face of every company, a brand will be seen before anything else, therefor it is the Brand Manager's responsibility to make sure it says all the right things.
  • Using clear brand guidelines, a Brand Manager must make sure everything the company produces is right for its audience.
  • Research is a key part of the role, especially to keep the brand up to date. This can involve anything from looking into how effective a piece of marketing is, to monitoring the current market trends.
  • Social interaction and frequent communication is required.

Research: Logo Designer

The job of a logo designer is to provide a new and innovative way to express the key message of a company through an image. Logo designers take the information given to them by a client and work, using their own creativity along with marketing strategy to find an appropriate image that their client can use to represent what they are trying to encourage, sell, or what they are.

Research: Brand

A brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business. A legally protected brand name is called a proprietary name.

Brand is the image of the product in the market. Some people distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the "brand experience." The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the "brand image" is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consist of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service.

People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. Orientation of the whole organisation towards its brand is called brand orientation.

Careful brand management seeks to make the product or services relevant to the target audience. Therefore cleverly crafted advertising campaigns can be highly successful in convincing consumers to pay remarkably high prices for products which are inherently extremely cheap to make. This concept, known as creating value, essentially consists of manipulating the projected image of the product so that a consumer sees the product as being worth the amount that the advertiser wants him/ her to see, rather than a more logical valuation that comprises an aggregate of the cost of raw materials, plus the cost of manufacture, plus the cost of distribution. Modern value-creation branding-and-advertising campaigns are highly successful at inducing consumers to pay, for example, £25 which cost 50p to make, or £3 for a breakfast cereal that contains a few pennies worth of wheat.

Brands should be seen as more than the difference between the actual cost of a product and its selling price - they represent the sum of all valuable qualities of a product to the consumer. There are many intangibles involved in business, intangibles left wholly from the income statement and balance sheet which determine how a business is perceived. The learned skill of a knowledge worker, the type of metal working, the type of stitch: all may be without an 'accounting cost' but for those who truly know the product, for it is these people the company should wish to find and keep, the difference is incomparable. Failing to recognise these assets, will set an enterprise at a serious disadvantage.

A brand which is widely known in the marketplace acquires "brand recognition." When brand recognition builds up to a point where a brand enjoys a critical mass of positive sentiment in the marketplace, it is said to have achieved "brand franchise." One goal in brand recognition is the identification of a brand without the name of the company present. For example, Disney has been successful at branding with their particular script font (originally created for Walt Disney's "signature" logo).

Consumers may look on branding as an important value added aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote a certain attractive quality or characteristic, which is known as "brand promise." From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services also command higher prices. Where two products resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such as a generic, store-branded product), people may often select the more expensive branded product on the basis of the quality of the product. Sometimes however consumers purchase a product either for its reputation and status or because it is simply what is familiar to them.

Roles (Group L)

I have volunteered to be brand/ logo designer as well as Brand Manager.

List (Group L)
Team Members & Roles:

Chris Caldow - Brand Manager/ Logo Designer - (Animation)

Laura Haile - Market Research Manager - (Animation)

Kofi Opoku-Ansa -  Marketing Manager - (Animation)

Harry Warrener - Market Research - (Animation)

Ashraf Abdallah - Finance Manager - (Post Production)

Hatice Ozbayir - Project Manager/ Presenter - (Post Production)

Peter Hewes - (Unknown) - (Post Production)

George Alton - (Unknown) - (Broadcasting)

Research: Logo

A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organisations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition. Logos are either purely graphic (symbols/icons) or are composed of the name of the organisation (a logotype or wordmark). In the high street a company's logo is today often synonymous with its trademark or brand.

Initial Ideas & Final Studio Concept

We have been allocated into fixed groups consisting of individuals from various fields with different talents and skills in order to come up with a concept for a product or company as a means of providing us with an understanding of how to construct a new business from scratch. Our concept will be judged by tutors who will assess whether our idea is "watertight" and "solid" and has potential for becoming successful.

Initially our group as a whole found it difficult to come up with an appealing idea that we were happy with and that we felt was interesting. However we soon came up with an idea of a studio which provided artistic talent for games and film. The concept of this studio was to house artistic, professional individuals who had skills across the artistic spectrum. For example this studio would house concept artists, story-boarders, 3D modellers, texturers, riggers, weighters, animators, lighters, cameramen, compositors, editors etc.

The idea is that this studio would be used by film and game companies to hire talented individuals to aid them on their productions.

E & E Brief

We have been instructed by our E&E tutors to form our team made up of various students from different courses in order to come up with a business concept for a company or product. We will then pitch our idea to the tutors who will carry out constructive criticism highlighting their strong points and finding holes in the concept.