I'm a graphic designer from Melbourne with a passion for logo design, brand identity, web and print, working worldwide.

As part of an intended 3 year rollout and $180,000 US rebrand, the English town of Burnley, Lancashire, last week began its journey with its new logo at the helm. No seriously… this is it.

Leading the way for Burnley is this ball of stuff, each strand of which represents a different element of Burnley. Red for urban, green for rural areas and half a dozen other colours for various unspecified traits of the town. Continue reading...

Through our experiences, education and environment the potential for differences in the way people see interpret symbols/logos is enormous. After a recent comment on one of my logo designs ( which I’ll get to in a minute ) I thought I’d take a look at how wildly opinions on symbols can vary.

The pentacle star is one such symbol open to various interpretations. Often associated with satanic practices, the pentacle star has had many meanings throughout history, the earliest of which dates back to around 4,000BC and is the Pagan symbol for the sacred feminine, the female half of all things. Continue reading...

With 2009 coming to an end it’s time to look back at 50 re-brands of the year gone by, as always there are the good… Opera web browser.

The bad… Xerox’s beach ball.

And the ugly… Whatever the hell this thing is from wacom.

For better or worse here are they are. Continue reading...

There’s no denying that re-branding is an exercise that requires careful consideration. Rather than create an entirely new image and lose a chunk of ( if not all ) brand recognition, many brands elect to refine there existing mark in order to update their look while not discarding any existing street cred.

If a mark is really horrible it may even undergo 3, 4 or more alterations over a period of years to ease into the desired look. But there’s subtle, and then there’s subtle…

Shown here are a few original ( left ) and recent changes ( right ) to some major brands, starting with the above Ford Mustang logo. Continue reading...

The brightest of colours, 3D lighting, glossy finishes and a reflection or two are all signature traits of Web 2.0 logo designs. It’s been a few years since the Web 2.0 boom and while a few have lasted the years many have not.

Below is a collection of globally recognized brand marks in both their 2.0 and traditional versions. Some are actively in use, some are beta logos only and some have come and gone.

I also quickly threw together a quick version of what my own logo design might look like in web 2.0 style, I’m not a fan… How do you think they compare to their traditional counterparts? Continue reading...