Fans of logo design, typography, and automobiles will love Chromeography, a website comprised almost entirely of photo submissions in praise of the chrome logos and lettering affixed to vintage automobiles and electric appliances — those unsung metal emblems and badges that are overlooked, forgotten, damaged, lost to time or the dump.

Wine Shack is an upstart wine store located in Huntington, New York. EC took on this project a few month’s back as Ted Ullrich, our lead in NY, brought me on to work on the identity for this brand. Ted worked on an interactive wine-pairing system for the store itself along with other digital elements. Here’s a first look at the logo and business card. There are a lot of brand touchpoints to see and we’ll update as soon as we have more photo-documentation of the work.

If you’ve never eaten at Woody’s Famous Philadelphia Cheesesteaks in Midtown, you are missing out on one of Atlanta’s most unique dine-in spots. Not only are the cheesesteaks possibly the best in town, but I get a huge kick out of all the hand-painted signs and tabletops in this unassuming restaurant. More often than not, great looking typography is rendered by hand and brought into the computer afterwards (if necessary). Sometimes it is difficult to convince my students at Portfolio Center to stay out of the computer until their ideas have been realized with pencil and paper first. Damn y’all, stay off your MacBooks for a few minutes!

Following a lot of internet backlash over Gap’s new logo, 2 hilarious twitter accounts have emerged, @OldGapLogo & @GapLogo. Also, a great website called CrapLogo.me allows users to generate their very own nonceptual logos. Now everyone can be as conformist and boring with their very own helvetica bold & blue gradient box logo! Is this trend of font + gradient and/or transparency-trick logos tired yet? C’mon people…

Gap has unveiled a new logo and it couldn’t be more perfect for how people feel about their brand. It’s mindless, boring, and there’s nothing special with it. Kind of reminds me of their clothes. Hmmm….

Needless to say, the logo is sucky and it took me approx 2 minutes to recreate it in Illustrator. They could’ve paid us to do their logo. It would’ve been the most-lucrative 2 minutes we’ve ever billed for.

Finally, I want to know who the bitches are at Laird & Partners, New York that are responsible for this offense. There are plenty of talented graphic designers in our city that are way more capable of creating something encompassing Gap’s past, present, and future goals. Many would jump at the opportunity to work on an account of that magnitude and I’m sure most would have the presence of mind to NOT squeeze out a turd like this.

Everyone knows that the Cleveland Cavaliers organization is approaching a new era of their franchise’s existence: The Post-LeBron Blues. I guess now was as good a time as any to make some drastic changes to the teams on-court look. The timing is right and the reasons are right to re-examine things and figure out what this team is going to be about in the future. A buddy of mine writes for Ball Don’t Lie over at Yahoo! and I thought he brought up some valid points as to why he likes this new direction. I’m with him on lots of levels but I need to chime in, so here goes.

PROS:
1) Retro Colors & Faux-back look: I’m all about embracing their “Wine & Gold” colors of the past and bringing them back out. I’m a huge fan of classic, flat, varsity gold. That’s a huge plus for me.

2) Less is More: In the past few seasons, you’d see the Cavaliers on television wearing all sorts of uniforms. It got to the point to where a casual fan couldn’t identify the real HOME & ROAD uniforms from ALTERNATE 1 & ALTERNATE 2 from THROWBACK 1 or 2. It was a hot mess. I’m assuming that the Cavs will be sticking to 2 uniforms for now. One HOME jersey and one ROAD jersey. I think I read somewhere that according to NBA rules, a team must play 3 seasons with new HOME and ROAD jerseys before applying to get approval on an alternate.

CONS:
1) Inconsistency: I hate hate hate how the “C” logo on the road uniforms is gold on the jersey and white on the shorts. Why would they do that? Also, why does the sword appear locked-up with the “C” on the shorts, but not on the back of the jersey? A good logo should stay the same no matter where you put it. Between the HOME and AWAY uniforms the logo changes colors 3 times. Someone deserves a bitch-slap for that.

2) Typography: Really? That’s the best they could come up with? The CLEVELAND CAVALIERS + Adidas got together and decided to type some letters out in an arc? C’mon guys! This is the National Basketball League. The brands are GLOBAL! This is all you could crank out? This job feels rushed. Hire us and we’ll give you some typography worthy of Anderbro Varejao to wear across his chest.

Overall Score:

I realize how well the old-school Cavs jerseys have done over the years and I love the decision to make a semi-retro statement. However, I question whether these new jerseys have just created more of the same kind of graphic statement to Cavs fans who are less than enthused about possibly missing the playoffs for years to come. More crap, same colors… Anyway, I’m fine with the concept and decisions to make a new statement. However, I’m pissed-off that someone signed off on this and someone was paid to “not think”.

Earlier this year, Larry and I had the privilege of being brought onto a project for IQ Interactive. It was actually for IQ and not for one of their clients, which we were excited about. For awhile now, we have worked with IQ on a few projects and we were honored that they asked us to help them come up with a new identity. They just recently moved into a new office space and needed a fresh start. It was a great experience working with another company that we respect, create a brand new logo. More photos coming soon.

One of my students, Addie Courington, sent me this pic the other day. Obviously, she’s having a lot of fun with her KC Wizards logo project. It’s at this point that she’s going to make the breakthroughs to finish-off an amazing logo.

This week, several of my students made significant breakthroughs on their sports logo projects, others are still finding their happy places with their logo marks. Often times, a designer can “have a hard time with the project” and feel stuck; which is often an excuse for not spending enough time on their assignments. Trust me, I had the same excuses as a student.

The way to get unstuck is to get out in the world and experience things that you wouldn’t normally do. Go cliff diving, get in a verbal argument, kick a soccer ball, punch a wall, get wasted, make out with someone, listen to loud music with the windows down, talk to a bum, or walk on a slack line with Mason Poe… Just do something to get out of your comfort zone and start paying astute attention to the world around you. The experiences can lead to lots of creativity.

I wanted to focus on Alyssa’s decision to rebrand the New Jersey Nets as the Brooklyn Beat, since they will be moving into a new arena in Brooklyn in 2 years time. Other ideas she had for names were the “Riders” and “Beats” but it made sense to remove the “s” from “Beats” to signify that all Brooklynites coexist within the same realm, groove, or rhythm.

The next step in her process is to generate imagery that will evoke Brooklyn without falling into the predicatble poor design stereotypes that exist within hip-hop, urban, and graffiti. Remember, it’s important for the new look of this franchise to communicate strongly to a global audience. The NBA is international. Pale-ass Asian bros like me still need to be able to buy into the team’s look and feel. What if I want to rock a Devin Harris jersey?

I think the easy thing to do is to gravitate to the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, and I think that using a singular piece of the bridge proves to be an interesting approach as a logo, although I think she should continue to explore other possibilities. I think that she’s going to have to create some kind of wordmark for the actual Brooklyn Beat name that will lock-up well with the mark. We’ll see how things develop!

Next week, we’ll see our groups’ initial business logos that were randomly assigned out of the Atlanta telephone book. I’m looking forward to seeing how they think outside of the sports realm.

This past week, my students spent a majority of their time doing research on their assigned teams. Some clearly made larger breakthroughs than others. A key to being successful with logo sketches involves narrowing down qualities that you want the logo to communicate. You might want to accentuate the roots of the city and downplay the actual mascot; or vice versa. Does the logo need a basketball or baseball in it? What kind of promotional items do you envision this logo being etched on? All these questions will eventually be answered during this process. Often times, creatives aren’t having fun with the projects and therefore the work suffers. Your quality of work reflects the joy you had in the creative process.

There’s a long way to go, so it’ll be interesting to see how these sketches develop into something concrete.

See more after the jump.

Dave – Atlanta Thrashers

Dave – Atlanta Thrashers

Dave – Atlanta Thrashers

Stephanie – Bakersfield Blaze

Addie – Kansas City Wizards

Catherine – Charlotte Bobcats

Nichole – Oklahoma City Thunder

Nichole – Oklahoma City Thunder

Alicia – Atlanta Apollos (MLS Bid)

Alyssa – New Jersey Nets >>> Brooklyn Beat