The major candidates are Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. The International Olympics Committee will announce the Gold Medal winner host on October 2.

But here are the logos.

Chicago

Olympics Chicago 2016 logo

Madrid

Madrid Olympics logo 2016

Designed by Joaquín Malle. It’s hand with the Olympics logo and a the M of Madrid, basically saying “Hola Everyone!”

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro Olympics 2016 logo

Designed by Ana Soter, it represents the Sugarloaf Mountain. Slogan: Live your passion.

Tokyo

Tokyo Olympics logo 2016

Designed by Kenji Ekuan, accompanied by the slogan, “Uniting Our Worlds.”

As explained in this article:

The logo of the Tokyo 2016 Olympic bid takes the form of a traditional Japanese knot, known in Japan as “MUSUBI.” It integrates the five Olympic colours into the motif of a “MIZUHIKI”, colourful and decorative knotted strings which long have been utilized in Japan to signify blessings during times of celebration.

Via: DesignerBlog.it

I had a client just like this the other day (alas not the only one) but this one was fairly difficult to deal with. He also requested something that was graphically incorrect and even almost impossible to realise. It wasn’t just about a colour that doesn’t go well with another. It was a request that was very similar to asking to set a fire by throwing cold water on wood.

The job comes on my desk in the morning, at 9:30 with the request that I get it done by 11am. The client calls at 10:45 asking me if I did it…

After the first draft, which was exactly per his instructions, he decided he didn’t like it and changed the instructions. Of course, what he asked wasn’t possible, but it was nevertheless my fault. He also went on about how he waited from 10:15 to 11am for my draft, to get something he didn’t like. Following the new instructions, still fairly impossible to realise, I tried to do them as quickly as possible, also explaning to him that I will refine them once he decides on one. By 13:00, he had 5 drafts to choose from.

He still wasn’t happy.

I don’t think I ever had so many problems with a client before. Eventually I just said one of our salesmen will contact him and we cancelled the job, and encouraged him to go to the other designer he really wanted to go to and with whom he had previous arrangements (which was the main reason of his impossible requests to me). Yet, the cherry on the candle: “Your designers take 5 minutes to make drafts, they don’t even spend time to work on them.” However it was by HIS request that I speeded up a job I already did quickly, and that others also saw and thought was well done.

Furthermore whoever contacted him didn’t have a contract. So I lost more than half a day in the end for a job that didn’t result into any income for the company. Needless to say, I had other things to take care of, one of them being 3 editions of a magazine.

This should be a lesson about spec work. Always have a contract (in this situation, I wasn’t the one taking care of it). Always specify the number of changes, drafts or hours in the contract. And when people ask you to do something in very little time, too little for the job you are being asked to do, try to explain to them that it requires time to do something properly, because in the end, as this very example showed, even they won’t be happy about it and will say you don’t even care for their job, even when you try to suggest to them better solutions, which I did.

This client wanted me to spend more time to take care of his job, but he didn’t have time to allow me that. I consider myself a decent designer, but that is out of my reach still.

But printed material isn’t the only thing that can give you inspiration. Stephanie Orma in her article Crank up Your Design Radar over at Smashing Magazine tells us:

No one understands the statement, “design is everywhere” better than us designers. But comprehension and integration are two totally separate acts. From food packaging, to billboards, to book covers, catalogs, websites, and everything in between, we spend the majority of our waking hours on our computers designing and/or looking at these designs through the portals of our monitors. But when the computer is shut down, does your “design radar” go off-line, as well?

Do you see design everywhere? Where do you get your ideas from? Are you sure you are not overlooking sources of inspiration? The article on Smashing Magazine is certainly a good read. You will realise there are so many things you just overlooked, many ideas just around the corner screaming, “Look at me!” and you just shoved them aside!

I remember some time ago I was a fairly big supporter of the fact that design is art, and posted a poll in the About Desktop Publishing forum. While I still think that, I view this in a different way now.

Art is often regarded as the expression of self. It has to comunicate something, and that communication will be very subjective to the beholder, but what you communicate as artist is your message, something that was created by your mind and you realise through artistic means. The means you use can be paintings, drawings, or any number of graphical arts that can include the use of graphics software.

That’s where people get confused. “Graphical Arts” are very different from “Graphic Design.” In Graphic Design you use the artistic tools to communicate a message, like you would do for art, but while you might achieve that through your ideas, you are not trying to convey your own personal message.

Being a designer means first and foremost being a communication counsellor. Your client wants to get somewhere and it’s your job to make sure he gets there the best way possible. Of course you have your own taste and your own style, but that cannot and must not compromise what the client wants to communicate. You are a problem solver, you are not an additional problem the client needs to deal with. I know this is a much colder view of design, but even with this view in mind, you are still able to use your creativity.

Sometimes your solution will not satisfy your client. It may be because your client has different tastes, yet you know that your design concept communicates his message. Sometimes your design might actually not communicate what the client wants. It is possible. If you are a real professional, you are able to take the client’s input and decide whether it’s time to change what you have done, or to put on your counsellor hat and tell the client why your solution works best. This has to be an honest look, and you cannot afford to simply say, “I am misunderstood” and keep going your way. You will lose clients.

If you cannot objectively look at what you have done, then you are not doing design, but you are doing a work of art, as art is very subjective. Design is objective… to a degree. Personal taste and style will always influence anything that has to do with creativity.

The trick is to learn how to channel that creativity.

A very important step in achieving this is to understand the client’s brief. Ask questions, make sure you fully grasp the message yourself. Then it will prove easier to think of ideas that carry that message. It’s hard to relay a phone message to a colleague, if the line of your cell phone was breaking up and you didn’t understand half of what was said, right?

Jacci Howard Bear has written a 6 day course that will give you guidelines, tips and directions that will help you put together a portfolio which will speak for itself. As she puts it:

“Desktop publishing or graphic design portfolios should be more than just a few samples thrown into any old folder. Potential employers or clients use examples of your work to help determine whether they want to hire you. The samples you choose for graphic design portfolios and how you present them can affect whether or not you get the job.”

This is an email course with lessons sent to you daily, however you can do the course at your own pace.

Remember that if you can’t present a good image of yourself, others won’t be compelled to put theirs in your hands.

Sue Chastain of About Graphics Software presents us a comprehensive and very hard to beat overview of the Suite, so I am not going to repeat what she has one, and, without any more delay, I encourage you to see the overview for yourself.

Another time, still travelling by train this time for totally ludicrous reasons, I notice the train has nice glass doors between compartments. I go though one and take a sit, wondering whether there was the same designer behind this idea. It didn’t take long to realize that it probably was the same designer. The door kept banging and the noise was really annoying. If it didn’t bang, it still made noise because of the vibrations of the train. This door was easy to open, but it never really closed.

You have to realize that I have been in England for a few years and Italian trains had changed a bit in the mean time. While I might hate English food, I think their trains are a little better compared to Italian ones.

Finally, on another train, I see this nice glass door that slides itself open when you push a button. No vibrations, easy to open and it closed itself too.

Wow.

How long does it take to think of something so simple? Looking at the number of Italian trains that have doors with a problem or another, it must be quite long.

What does this have to do with Desktop Publishing? Functionality is the answer. When you design something you need to know that it will print. Your expertise will play an important role in this. You might need to go about things differently, while still obtaining the same visual effect, to make sure your design will print. For example you need to know that if you overprint a 50% black object (gray) on a red background, your gray will become redish.

This holds true also for the “communication value” of your design. I had an example of this some time ago. I was designing a flyer-map to show all the places where a certain type of wine was being served. Each place had wine from a different Italian region. Each region was listed separately, with a different colour for each (not my idea.) The client wanted me to put a glass of wine on the map on every point where the wine was sold, and they had to have a different colour, corresponding to the ones of the regions. On top of that, each glass had a number next to them, which showed the readers what shop it was and where the wine came from. I call that “overdoing it.” We had lots of different coloured glasses on a map that was already full of street names, as well as a bunch of bumbers. Some colours weren’t even showing well.

The purpose of the client was to stress where the wine came from, instead he was comfusing the reader. A bit like those train doors that either designed to close themselves but cannot be opened easily, or to open easily and then don’t stay closed. Eventually we just told the client that the numbers were enough and the colours were too confusing and weren’t doing the job, and I just used the key colour of the job, burgundy, for all glasses. Readers still knew what each place was and what wine they were getting there because of the numbers that were sending them to an agenda—which would have been there anyway even if the glasses had different colours.

I guess I should go onto trains first thing in the morning more often.

This is a question I have asked myself so many times that I lost count. Then I again I haven’t been counting. As a designer you need to know how to visually communicate a message, that’s the essence of your job. Yet sometimes you see an article about cows and you see a bell or a stylized face of a cow used as a bullet. Or you are doing a car catalogue and you notice that the page numbers have the same elements of the logo of the car. Sometimes you manage to think at those things in a snap, while other times you just have a design block. What do you do in that situation?

If your job is based on a full marketing research, you will probably know what people think of when you say “drink” or when you say “soccer.” Thus you start using design elements that are related to those subjects to get your audience to dive into the article they are reading. Other times you just don’t have that marketing research and it isn’t required that you do one. You still have to communicate your message effectively, you have to pound in the head of your reader that you are talking about soccer and the various design elements serve that purpose. The article alone isn’t enough. The design elements around that article have to clearly tell that it’s all about football. Yet you still have a design block. You really don’t know what to associate to soccer.

Internet search engines and SEO techniques are often a good tool.

“How?”, you say, “I already have an article about soccer, I don’t need more information about it. And my magazine isn’t going to appear on Google’s top entries, it’s a printed product! I really think you didnt drink enough coffee, want me to make some more?”

While I thank you for your offer, I am pretty much convinced you can’t beat Italian coffee, so I’ll have to decline. Think about it. With SEO you discover the keywords people use to find out about to a certain subject and you get to know what they are interested in. This will help you approach something with the eyes of your readers. After all in a marketing research you find out what people need and want, and tools like Overture do that in seconds.

OK, now you know what people need and want, you know how to word your phrases to strike them in their soccer supporter hearts, but still that doesn’t tell you how to find good visuals. Yet it does. Now you know what words to type in Google Images, or Yahoo! or whatever you are using, and you will get a lot of pictures and graphics showing you exactly what people think when you say soccer, world cup, football, etc. While you should not use those images without permission, you now have lots of ideas for your design elements. You can use the same keywords in stock photography sites and find images you can actually use too. This simple method does not replace marketing research, but it’s surely helpful to get ideas while you design. Most of you are probably doing that already.

I have used the subject of soccer since it’s very familiar to people. It’s an easy subject to think with, so everyone can follow the article easily, I am sure you agree. However this very simple method can be used in other situations, with other subjects.

Now, how exactly do I know that soccer is familiar to most people?

Fear not, however, because BoDo (Business of Design Online) has just launched. This is one of the most brilliant ideas I have seen. I’ll let the people behind BoDo tell you what this new blog is about.

Many designers setting up shop have searched for answers and assistance by posting questions on various design forums, emailing pros for advice, reading everything on offer and googling when it’s not.

Forums, books and blog postings are helping to address this issue, but from our vantage point, concentrated help was needed. Help that would bring it all together, in one place. Easy to find.

As a Creative Latitude response, the Business of Design online (BoDo) was created.

Conceived and developed by Catherine (cat) Morley, Neil (nt) Tortorella and Jeanette (jay) Wickham (the BoDo team), BoDo’s aim is to provide a focused wealth of information, tools and techniques for successfully managing and marketing a design practice.

That’s right, there won’t be a Photoshop tutorial in sight.

On BoDo you’ll find continuously updated resources for running a design shop, including select e-books, business forms, excellent articles and more.

Although the team will contribute regular blog posts and the occasional series, we feel a big part of our strength will be the growing list of visiting authors.

On the design side, BoDo’s visiting author line-up includes Creative Latitude’s Graphic Make-overs host Alina Hagen of Alina Design. At Alina’s In-sights, Alina will post about life in-house. At Erin’s Review, studious Erin Harris of Sanguine Theory will share thoughts on various business of design books. As they happen, at Bean’s Biz, Stefan Bean of Pulse Creative Partners, Inc., will mull over the experiences of a new(ish) business start-up. Sometimes weekly, always monthly, Thomas (Tom) Stephan will have us grinning away in the work place at Dyer Straits.

As designers do not run their businesses in a vacuum, rounding out the discussion will be non-design authors such as writer and blogger ME “Liz” Strauss of Successful Blog, Letting Liz Be, Liz Strauss.com, The Blog Herald, and Performancing.com. Liz will talk about all things business writing at Write with ME. At Creative Conversations, Dr. Tammy Lenski of I Can’t Say That! and Lenski Strategic will share wisdom about conversations and conflict on the client and colleague front. At Creative Coaching, trained psychotherapist and creative coach Mark McGuinness from Wishful Thinking will instruct on the subject of creative thinking, communication and collaboration.

To get things started, we’ll begin with a bite, a nibble, a BoDo Niblet if you will, the “Starting Out and Setting Up” series. The two week series, pulling in advice from Abhijit Nadgouda, Alina Hagen, Chris Tomlinson, Danita Reynolds, Tammy Lenski Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua, ME “Liz” Strauss, Mark McGuinness, Stefan Bean and of course Cat, Neil and Jay, will tackle knowing when you’re ready, managing money, equipment, location, etc.

Coming after will be two series running side by side – “Top 10 Marketing Missteps” (by Neil), covering marketing faux pas. And “Designer’s Working With” (by Cat). The “Working With” series talks about how to effectively work with other creatives such as writers, photographers, marketing professionals, illustrators, programmers, printers and pre press specialists.

In between will be Podcast Humpdays (wink, wink for all you Australians and Europeans out there), Resourceful Fridays, Weekly Recaps, Sunday Stressbusters, and a poll. Jay will come in with, what else, Ask jay, to answer individual business questions.

Starting out with a full schedule, the team looks forward to your comments and input on BoDo. It’s a win-win offer actually, as it’s our goal to help others wade through the new design business quagmire.

So come on down,
The BoDo Team
cat – nt – jay

There it was: an automated logo creation site! It’s called “Make My Own Logo.”

The idea is that a client fills out a form with their company name and their industry and the logo is created. No creative mind behind it, just a bunch of automated logos, which look like the same logos someone else trying the same site will get. Several designers tried it out just for kicks and they were getting pretty much the same logos as everyone else.

It just doesn’t work that way.

Logos have to be unique and have to be based on marketing studies. They have to represent a company, they have to communicate instantly and have to be simple. They are not clipart. And what about the graphic format? MMOL (whose logo is ugly) says it will be instantly mailed. As a JPEG? As a TIF? What if the logo needs to be bigger? A raster format won’t work.

These are the sites that devalue the graphic design profession. Someone decides to make a few bucks by putting up a totally automated site, where the owner has to only make sure the money goes onto their bank account, and there you have it: a site that is damaging not only the graphic design profession but also the clients using it—they get a service that isn’t worth even the $99 advertised on MMOL. All they get is an amateurish logo, with detailed cliparts that don’t look good when the logos are small and don’t look good when they have to be made big, since the file format emailed will be raster.

It’s important that designers spot these things and make them know as examples of what SHOULD NOT be done. These sites say to clients that spec work is the way to go, that they can just get tons of drafts from designers and then go to their uncle who knows how to use Photoshop and will execute the idea for free, infringing the designer’s rights, as well as making sure they won’t get further help from professionals who could be very valuable to them, and who have the know-how to help them as they deserve.