Felix Sockwell: “Today the iPhone/ nytimes app releases. I’ve drawn GUI before but this one was special. For my news of choice and another chance to work with renowned web wizard Khoi Vinh and designer Caryn Tutino.”

“The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is… A collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner or anyone else he knows. Have fun.”

“CR Blog is at the Design Indaba in Cape Town and reports on a talk by graphic design legend Ivan Chermayeff. This animation of hundreds of logos that his studio has designed is a real gem. Chock full of famous brands such as Mobil, National Geographic and Chase Manhattan, it’s ten minutes long – if you don’t have the time just watch the quick rewind in the last five seconds (caution – flashing images)…”

“Pacifists and war protesters all over the world wear peace signs on shoulder bags and jeans jackets. But only few know what the symbol really means, and where it came from.

Exactly fifty years ago British designer Gerald Holtom created what would become the international peace symbol. On February 21, 1958 the Royal College of Art trained artist designed a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the start of the British peace movement.”

A presentation by former XPLANEr Eric Lewallen at Ignite Portland 2. (Thanks Jon!)

“You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

Let’s take a look at the origin of tech companies’ logos and how they evolved over time…”

“Late last year, a slide show in The New York Times, ‘Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos’ took to the blogwaves like wildfire. In it, illustrator Ward Sutton passed mocking judgment (to great effect) on all of the 2008 presidential candidate logos, commenting on anything from the type choice to the relative size of the R in Rudy Giuliani’s logo (”Extra large ‘R’ to remind you just how Republican he is”). But in his zeal to mock equally, he certainly got one critique wrong: Obama ‘08.”

“This site converts bitmap images to vector art — it’s an online auto-tracer. Just upload your image and we will vectorize it for you. Vector art is useful because it allows you to scale an image without making it blurry or pixelated. Vectorization (aka tracing) is the process of converting a raster image to a vector image. Raster images are pixel-based, whereas vector images are represented by geometric shapes such as lines, circles and curves.”

“The IAN symbol libraries contain over 1500 custom made vector symbols (in 32 categories) designed specifically for enhancing science communication skills. The libraries are designed primarily for use with Adobe Illustrator (requires version 10 or better), however we also offer eps and svg versions for non-Illustrator users. The symbols allow diagrammatic representations of complex processes to be developed easily with minimal graphical skills.”

“Anybody who listens to the BBC’s online radio service will have noticed that their brands have been up-dated. This post is a quick review of what they’ve done and an assessment of if it works.

I find that brand portfolios are always a tricky subject. You find that with any large organization who develop a brand portfolio that they normally start off with little or no regard for the over-all styling in regard to each other. New products or services (shall we call them ‘ventures’) develop as a law unto themselves.

Suddenly, one day a marketing manager wakes up and realizes that the umbrella brand identity (in this example the ‘bbc brand’) seems alien to its children. Then steps are made to bring the portfolio into line so that a consistent style is met across all of them.” (Thanks Monoscope!)

“In early August, the medical supplies and drug firm Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over the right to use the red-cross emblem. Most of us had assumed that the red cross, seen on ambulances and first-aid kits, was a universal symbol of succor to the suffering. But like any graphic symbol, the red cross turns out to have more meanings and more history than would at first appear. And the rights to use this symbol are equally complicated—a reminder that many graphic symbols have more complex stories than we expect.”

“This article introduces the mental process, analysis and evaluation applied by designers during their work on the Warsaw subway signage system project. Users’ points of view were predominant in the design procedure. Establishing the groups of potential information receivers and their needs allowed designers to define the scope of the system and areas it was to cover. Envisioning the street-train-street ‘path’ of users allowed designers to build the conceptual model that defined the design problems and solutions.” (Thanks Doug Wilson!)

“It’s frothy out there in web round 2, assuming we’re in round 2, and all those bubbles really add to the effect. Each day, I see more than one new speech bubble logo. Am I the only one who thinks this has passed the point of group think, and entered the realm of comedy?”

A magazine made up of found photos, made even more interesting by theming the issues. Nice.

“This is E Logo Design’s list of best logo design tutorials on the internet (in no particular order).” (Note: These tutorials are more about some of the craft that can play into making a logo. -bk)