Page 94 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 3: Information Products

Monoline Notes
An old rule of thumb to the socially adept was you can never be too rich or too thin. There is certain
elegance in an ultra-thin line, and this has never been lost on designers. Challenging as these may be
on aging eyes, when designed well and not under-scaled, they will coax a pair of readers from the
viewer’s pocket.
More than a few typographic marks have also picked up a spa membership in the last year. This is
seen in script and in san serif display type. Note that in the type and illustration solutions, the line
is not variable but rather a mono-weight.

Series
A single client having a series of logos is absolutely nothing new. This is a time-tested solution to
maintaining a core, consistent visual identity while focusing on specific divisions, products, or services.
What is remarkable is the sudden ubiquitous deluge of these family marks.
In some cases, there is a parent mark that the family is constructed to relate to. Yet in others, every
logo is of equal importance, and there is no single flagship logo. Nickelodeon exemplified this years
ago with a common typographic solution knocked out of an orange field of fill-in-the-blank. But
that solution relied more on the volume of solutions rather than the specificity of topic.
One consideration might be the expansive adoption of icon sets for mobile devices or Internet apps,
which have built greater consumer familiarity with the concept of allowing a core icon to be redressed
to take on multiple focuses. Colour-coded series can be the least effective of these if the audience
must memorize a system. Equally dangerous is the consumer not recognizing that a single mark is
part of a greater system because of lack of context.

Brown
Every year we see colour preferences ebb and flow, and if notable enough, we will mention this in the
also-ran section at the end of the report. This year, with full apologies to UPS, designers discovered
what brown could do for them. This was an abrupt and more universal movement, which warrants
its appearance in the trend section.
It’s as if the volume knob had been pegged on black for maximum contrast for the last two decades,
and we suddenly discovered it could be turned down and consumers could still hear us. This
movement is about subtleties and is indicative of a new generation. Tone ranges from sepias, to
chocolates, and even warmer.
Saturation levels of secondary colours have dropped back as well. Pinks always work well with
brown, but other colours are being paired up here as well. Generally, these are clean colours that
have had their chroma drained by half.

Dandruff

Proof that a little interference can truly break the tension. Any of these logos could survive without
the dusting of white, but it is what helps set these marks in a hand-crafted genre and makes them
more approachable. Crumpling, creasing, skewing, and distressing the art to create the prewashed
look has been popular for years. This subtle effect has a few of its own differences that set it apart
from the common methods of abuse.
This sprits of the logo surface is not always universal. More often it is applied only to specific areas
of the mark. The open negative areas allow for the substrate to peek through, giving the logo a
strong sense of place. If there is an attempt to emulate a look, it may be that of a block letterpress
print that wasn’t liberally inked. Because only limited areas of the mark may use this effect, these
logos are able to live with one foot in the future and another in the past.

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