Each year trends come and go in many areas and logo design is no exception. Previously favored minimal logos are seemingly on the decline, while Web 2.0 and especially vivid colours are all the rage.

Logotypes and prominently typographic marks are being used to convey precise messages while graphical elements are becoming secondary. Even previously conservative brands are taking on bold new identities.

Assembled here are 75 logo designs from 25 trends of 2009. The trends will almost certainly fade, but will the logos themselves stand the test of time?

Candy stripes

Circulative

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If your not familiar with the term, hot-linking refers to linking to images stored on another webpage that the linker doesn’t own/operate, this is a strict no-no of web design etiquette. The reason is that by hot-linking, you’re essentially stealing the bandwidth that the original web operator is paying for.

At some point you’ve no doubt visited a website expecting to see a particular image, only to be greeted by something like this:

For website operators deciding whether or not to prevent hot-linking would seem like a no-brainer. But depending on your website it can have a downside. Continue reading...

Walk into any bottle shop and it’s much the same. Nearly every wine bottle is the same shape, spirit bottles have a small selection of shapes, generally square, round or with a slight contour. Whatever the case may be, typically it’s up to the label to sell the product.

But what about the bottle? The Coca-Cola bottle for example is as much a part of the brand as it’s logo and makes the product recognizable regardless of the label.

Included here are 10 products with beautiful bottles designs. What a difference these would make when trying to stand out on the shelf.

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As you no doubt know, no 2 screens are the same. Due to manufacturing differences, software settings, and the age of your screen, each display shows colour differently. When printing this obviously creates a problem.

If your working on corporate ID using Pantone colours having a 100% accurate screen probably isn’t critical as you’ll be referring to your Pantone swatch book for colours and will know exactly what to expect. For anything full colour your monitor needs to be right.

For a roughly accurate display you can try to match onscreen colours to you swatch book, though doing it by eye is never going to be perfect.Between changing ambient lights and your brain correcting what you see, you’ll never create a truly accurate profile.

This is where monitor profiling hardware like the Huey Pro comes in. Continue reading...

Portrait business cards are definitely less common then landscape cards, which in design is a good thing. After all, isn’t the idea to stand out from the crowd? But if this is the case why are there so few portrait cards?

Is it practicality? All rollerdex’s and business card folders are for landscape cards, is this why the majority of cards are landscape?

I’ve asked both colleagues out of curiosity and clients regarding their work in progress what their opinions on portrait cards are. The answer has always been somewhere between dislike and indifference. I’ve never had someone give portrait cards a solid thumbs up.

I’ve posted 20 or so portrait business cards here, all of which are good designs, but why so few to choose from, what do you think?

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