Graham Smith

Quite often we hear how Apple will make a move against some company for possible infringement against it’s numerous and heavily protected trademarks. Usually I give them a passing look and move on.

I caught another trademark story in TheNextWeb (via Sydney Morning Herald) and this time the story me looking a little deeper. The long and short of it is that a New Zealand company, who have made a range of waterproof iPhone cases called driPhone (their logo on the right), has come under scrutiny by Apple for possible trademark infringement.

I’ll be the very first to state that I am no trademark lawyer, and certainly not a shrewd or calculating businessman, so  whatever drivel you read thus is purely my own opinion based on my experience with logo and brand design rather than some brilliant business style analysis.

What I find astonishing is that Hayden Crowther seems a little miffed, apparently believing that Apple’s complaint holds “little weight“, that Apple has taken this stance and wants to legitimately protect the valuable iPhone brand.

It’s not just the fact that Hayden has actually used the familiar ”i”, but it’s that the whole driPhone logo is practically identical to Apple’s iPhone logo. That sort of logo similarity doesn’t happen, and especially in Apple’s case, by accident. One has to make a choice to ride the success of another brand and make that decision to sail ever so close to the trade winds.

In this case the ultra similar typeface used in the driPhone logo along with the “i” is definitely, in my driveling laymen’s opinion, treading on Apple’s precious, is it not?

On the surface, and taking a simplistic look at logo design similarities and common sense application of the branding of accessories for Apple gear, and assuming that most people are aware of how Apple tends to despatch the trademark lawyers at any whiff of trademark infringement, I find this all a little amusing.

Alternatively, giving the benefit-of-the-doubt: this is one big calculated risk at obtaining some controversial coverage and thus drive some healthy early sales of the driPhone before it all, and expectedly, comes crashing down, then with the money made from the initial sales they can put back into rebranding and remanufacturing the dryPhone minus the “i”.

Win—Lose—Win, or something like that.

It’s just that reference to, “little weight“, that gnaws at my sensitive psychological and emotional being. If you are going to call Apple’s bluff out in public you have better be damn sure you really have something meaty to back it all up with. Or just have shit loads of money to play silly sods with.

I would like to finish by saying I really do like these driPhone waterproof cases as they are simply gorgeous. Just a bloody cheeky, or naivé, move on the accused. I will be interested to see how this one unfolds.

K Found on TheNextWeb

Just had to show this lovely vintage style logo design by the talented A. Micah Smith. It’s a fine line one treads when trying to replicate the aged, worn, reduplicated, photocopied, printed look in modern logo work.

K Logo Design by A. Micah Smith

You’ll need to view the larger size so head over to BayerBerg’s Flickr stream to see sizes of Life & Career of Your Average Designer Infographic up to 2620px in width. Plenty big enough even for you poor designers with poor degraded eye site as a result of too many hours staring at that pixel.

Whilst you’re there add it as a Favourite.

K Found on Thisisn’thappiness

Fascinating look at how some of our beloved cereal brands—mostly references US cereal brands, but many have reached UK shores—have evolved over the last 50 years.

Really astonishing to see how little many of these cereal brands have changed over the decades: consistent use of brand mascots, colours and often times similar typography styles.

Really fascinated by these. You can see many more on Retronaut as well as on the original website The Imaginery World for an exhaustive collection.

K Found on Retronaut

Something very special going on with the ultra-minimalistic branding for Baxter Atlantic Beach Soap. Being someone who does appreciate the variety of smells, soaps, gels and creams I always take note of how each is packaged and branded.

That stunningly gorgeous colour with the pure white label containing that clean—and clean is the first word that came to mind, and being soap bar that’s pretty logical—word mark: I would buy this if I saw it on a shelf.

K Found on Doobybrain

Amazes me that people will actually spot these subtle differences in the first place, assuming they didn’t get a special tip-off.

I read in the comments on FinerThingsInMac that the new Iconography for Mac OS X 10.7.3 are quite the Micky Mouse style, but with 5 fingers instead of the cartoon 4 style.

K Read more FinerThingsInMac

Utterly intrigued by these specialised typefaces being developed to help bridge cross-culture typography. Collator, designed by Vince Lo, is a bilingual typeface designed to achive greater harmony between Chinese and Latin type forms.

K Find our more, and download Collator on CreativeRoots

Astonishing and captivating photographs (all photographs by Alfred Eisenstaed) of Marilyn Monroe at home. Loving the set of her lounging on her sofa with a book scribbling away.

K Found on Retronaut

FedEx Brand Identity Quick Reference Guide is a nice little PDF covering the most basic of brand guideline advice for the FedEx range of logos.

What I do find most interesting is finally being able to nail down what version of red, blue—I mean purple—are the official FedEx colours.

K Download FedEx Brand Identity Quick Reference Guide

Justin Halpern’s logos to be taken with a healthy dose of not-to-be-taken-seriously. I don’t understand or follow NFL so can’t really assess how appropriate or inappropriate any of these are.

Take a look at a truck-load more on Thesefriesaregood.

K Found on Thisisn’thappiness

I may have the opportunity to work on a nice identity project with a client based in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and with this possibility I need to brush up on certain skills: namely how typography, visual brand imagery and the actual finished logo design will need to translate to Arabic whilst keeping a clear brand link between the two.

This potential new client sent me some homework to absorb: examples of famous brands that have been translated to Arabic including the Arabic FedEx logo.

I was also passed some interesting information on the how-to of Arabic logo translation:

It is explained further, thus:

Just to make it clear that the image of the Arabic FedEx logo above in this post is NOT the official version. It is vector version I tried my best to recreate from the photographs to hand.

Now I know the Arabic version of the FedEx logo is not new, but I think this is one of the few times I have actually seen it and paid attention to it. There are a few smatterings of the logo around the net, but finding a half decent image of the Arabic FedEx logo has been a fruitless task. The only versions I have found are photographs of the logo on the side of vans, and even then they are of questionable quality.

You can see the official Arabic FedEx logo on the website (below).

Sidenote. The FedEx logo has to have the largest selection of inaccurate colour versions of any brand I know. There are 4 just on this page alone. Bloody nightmare.

The few existing blogs that have referenced the Arabic FedEx logo have pointed out the implementation of the negative space arrow within the Arabic version.

Given Arabic is read right-to-left it then makes sense that the negative space arrow follows this same reading direction as well as the design logic of the original FedEx logo. It’s a heck of a loto easier to spot the negative space arrow in the Arabic version due to the typography constraints, but it’s still a decent translation/conversion.

Surely not an envious task to have been responsible for the Arabic version of the FedEx logo? Let’s hope expectations were suitably realistic.

Interestingly there is a unofficial version of the Arabic FedEx logo on Behance and Deviant Art (above). As far as I can tell is a reimagined idea of how it should look like according to this particular designer.

The important distinction is that the original version has the infamous arrow located entirely in the red type, as it indeed should be? The concept version has the arrow sandwiched between the Fedex Pantone Purple 2685 and Pantone Red 186 letters for some reason I can’t fully grasp.

I ‘m certainly not in a position to make any kind of judgement on this version given my total inability to read Arabic, but I would be interested to know the rational behind the positioning of the negative space arrow.

Know Your Onions: Graphic Design, written by Drew de Solo, looks great especially as it’s designed more like a notebook: enabling you to add your own notes to the supplied blank pages as you go along.

Know Your Onions sounds like it is aimed at the novice-intermediate level from what I can tell from the summary and table of contents.

Know Your Onions (BIS Publishers, IBSN 978-90-6369-258-2 , €17)

From the Publisher

K Found on GetAddictedTo

Archive, a free font download by Slava Kirilenko, has some real interesting letter forms for you to play with. Download link found on FontFabric.

K Found on FontFabric

Could this ongoing and seemingly relentless Pantone-ify (term nabbed from ColorCubed) of consumer products possibly make the Pantone name bor-ing in the not-to-distant-future? Or, if not bor-ing, then a fate worse than that in the guise of  cliché-rism of the Pantone name?

I, for one, feel I am thinking way too hard about this so just going to enjoy these lovely Pantone Universe placemats for what they are.

K Found on NotCot

Quite often we hear how Apple will make a move against some company for possible infringement against it’s numerous and heavily protected trademarks. Usually I give them a passing look and move on.

I caught another trademark story in TheNextWeb (via Sydney Morning Herald) and this time the story me looking a little deeper. The long and short of it is that a New Zealand company, who have made a range of waterproof iPhone cases called driPhone (their logo on the right), has come under scrutiny by Apple for possible trademark infringement.

I’ll be the very first to state that I am no trademark lawyer, and certainly not a shrewd or calculating businessman, so  whatever drivel you read thus is purely my own opinion based on my experience with logo and brand design rather than some brilliant business style analysis.

What I find astonishing is that Hayden Crowther seems a little miffed, apparently believing that Apple’s complaint holds “little weight“, that Apple has taken this stance and wants to legitimately protect the valuable iPhone brand.

It’s not just the fact that Hayden has actually used the familiar ”i”, but it’s that the whole driPhone logo is practically identical to Apple’s iPhone logo. That sort of logo similarity doesn’t happen, and especially in Apple’s case, by accident. One has to make a choice to ride the success of another brand and make that decision to sail ever so close to the trade winds.

In this case the ultra similar typeface used in the driPhone logo along with the “i” is definitely, in my driveling laymen’s opinion, treading on Apple’s precious, is it not?

On the surface, and taking a simplistic look at logo design similarities and common sense application of the branding of accessories for Apple gear, and assuming that most people are aware of how Apple tends to despatch the trademark lawyers at any whiff of trademark infringement, I find this all a little amusing.

Alternatively, giving the benefit-of-the-doubt: this is one big calculated risk at obtaining some controversial coverage and thus drive some healthy early sales of the driPhone before it all, and expectedly, comes crashing down, then with the money made from the initial sales they can put back into rebranding and remanufacturing the dryPhone minus the “i”.

Win—Lose—Win, or something like that.

It’s just that reference to, “little weight“, that gnaws at my sensitive psychological and emotional being. If you are going to call Apple’s bluff out in public you have better be damn sure you really have something meaty to back it all up with. Or just have shit loads of money to play silly sods with.

I would like to finish by saying I really do like these driPhone waterproof cases as they are simply gorgeous. Just a bloody cheeky, or naivé, move on the accused. I will be interested to see how this one unfolds.

K Found on TheNextWeb

Just had to show this lovely vintage style logo design by the talented A. Micah Smith. It’s a fine line one treads when trying to replicate the aged, worn, reduplicated, photocopied, printed look in modern logo work.

K Logo Design by A. Micah Smith

You’ll need to view the larger size so head over to BayerBerg’s Flickr stream to see sizes of Life & Career of Your Average Designer Infographic up to 2620px in width. Plenty big enough even for you poor designers with poor degraded eye site as a result of too many hours staring at that pixel.

Whilst you’re there add it as a Favourite.

K Found on Thisisn’thappiness

Fascinating look at how some of our beloved cereal brands—mostly references US cereal brands, but many have reached UK shores—have evolved over the last 50 years.

Really astonishing to see how little many of these cereal brands have changed over the decades: consistent use of brand mascots, colours and often times similar typography styles.

Really fascinated by these. You can see many more on Retronaut as well as on the original website The Imaginery World for an exhaustive collection.

K Found on Retronaut

Something very special going on with the ultra-minimalistic branding for Baxter Atlantic Beach Soap. Being someone who does appreciate the variety of smells, soaps, gels and creams I always take note of how each is packaged and branded.

That stunningly gorgeous colour with the pure white label containing that clean—and clean is the first word that came to mind, and being soap bar that’s pretty logical—word mark: I would buy this if I saw it on a shelf.

K Found on Doobybrain

Amazes me that people will actually spot these subtle differences in the first place, assuming they didn’t get a special tip-off.

I read in the comments on FinerThingsInMac that the new Iconography for Mac OS X 10.7.3 are quite the Micky Mouse style, but with 5 fingers instead of the cartoon 4 style.

K Read more FinerThingsInMac

Utterly intrigued by these specialised typefaces being developed to help bridge cross-culture typography. Collator, designed by Vince Lo, is a bilingual typeface designed to achive greater harmony between Chinese and Latin type forms.

K Find our more, and download Collator on CreativeRoots

Astonishing and captivating photographs (all photographs by Alfred Eisenstaed) of Marilyn Monroe at home. Loving the set of her lounging on her sofa with a book scribbling away.

K Found on Retronaut

FedEx Brand Identity Quick Reference Guide is a nice little PDF covering the most basic of brand guideline advice for the FedEx range of logos.

What I do find most interesting is finally being able to nail down what version of red, blue—I mean purple—are the official FedEx colours.

K Download FedEx Brand Identity Quick Reference Guide

Justin Halpern’s logos to be taken with a healthy dose of not-to-be-taken-seriously. I don’t understand or follow NFL so can’t really assess how appropriate or inappropriate any of these are.

Take a look at a truck-load more on Thesefriesaregood.

K Found on Thisisn’thappiness

I may have the opportunity to work on a nice identity project with a client based in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and with this possibility I need to brush up on certain skills: namely how typography, visual brand imagery and the actual finished logo design will need to translate to Arabic whilst keeping a clear brand link between the two.

This potential new client sent me some homework to absorb: examples of famous brands that have been translated to Arabic including the Arabic FedEx logo.

I was also passed some interesting information on the how-to of Arabic logo translation:

It is explained further, thus:

Just to make it clear that the image of the Arabic FedEx logo above in this post is NOT the official version. It is vector version I tried my best to recreate from the photographs to hand.

Now I know the Arabic version of the FedEx logo is not new, but I think this is one of the few times I have actually seen it and paid attention to it. There are a few smatterings of the logo around the net, but finding a half decent image of the Arabic FedEx logo has been a fruitless task. The only versions I have found are photographs of the logo on the side of vans, and even then they are of questionable quality.

You can see the official Arabic FedEx logo on the website (below).

Sidenote. The FedEx logo has to have the largest selection of inaccurate colour versions of any brand I know. There are 4 just on this page alone. Bloody nightmare.

The few existing blogs that have referenced the Arabic FedEx logo have pointed out the implementation of the negative space arrow within the Arabic version.

Given Arabic is read right-to-left it then makes sense that the negative space arrow follows this same reading direction as well as the design logic of the original FedEx logo. It’s a heck of a loto easier to spot the negative space arrow in the Arabic version due to the typography constraints, but it’s still a decent translation/conversion.

Surely not an envious task to have been responsible for the Arabic version of the FedEx logo? Let’s hope expectations were suitably realistic.

Interestingly there is a unofficial version of the Arabic FedEx logo on Behance and Deviant Art (above). As far as I can tell is a reimagined idea of how it should look like according to this particular designer.

The important distinction is that the original version has the infamous arrow located entirely in the red type, as it indeed should be? The concept version has the arrow sandwiched between the Fedex Pantone Purple 2685 and Pantone Red 186 letters for some reason I can’t fully grasp.

I ‘m certainly not in a position to make any kind of judgement on this version given my total inability to read Arabic, but I would be interested to know the rational behind the positioning of the negative space arrow.

Know Your Onions: Graphic Design, written by Drew de Solo, looks great especially as it’s designed more like a notebook: enabling you to add your own notes to the supplied blank pages as you go along.

Know Your Onions sounds like it is aimed at the novice-intermediate level from what I can tell from the summary and table of contents.

Know Your Onions (BIS Publishers, IBSN 978-90-6369-258-2 , €17)

From the Publisher

K Found on GetAddictedTo

Archive, a free font download by Slava Kirilenko, has some real interesting letter forms for you to play with. Download link found on FontFabric.

K Found on FontFabric

Could this ongoing and seemingly relentless Pantone-ify (term nabbed from ColorCubed) of consumer products possibly make the Pantone name bor-ing in the not-to-distant-future? Or, if not bor-ing, then a fate worse than that in the guise of  cliché-rism of the Pantone name?

I, for one, feel I am thinking way too hard about this so just going to enjoy these lovely Pantone Universe placemats for what they are.

K Found on NotCot