A new package for Kraft

We go through a lot of cheese at my house. My son's favorite brand is Kraft--he swears it melts better on his quesadillas. so today at the grocery store I go to grab the bag of cheese and find side by side two different packages of the same cheese.

This is the original package of Kraft Sharp Cheddar Cheese that I have used for what seems like years.

This is the new and improved look.
which I actually like better. I mean who wouldn't it is not just "sharp cheddar cheese" but "aged Wisconsin sharp cheddar". the price is exactly the same even though this one would appear to be the designer edition.

But then I got to thinking of something I saw on the "Today Show" this week. The discussion has been going around about the similarities of the new Pepsi logo to the campaign logo for our new president. A quick search on google showed me that there are striking similarities between them. have a look for yourself.

the new Pepsi logo

and this is the logo for the presidential campaign

So do they look similar to anyone else?

And is the simplification of the design going to be a new trend to watch, like the new design of cheddar cheese I found today?

Success!!

Jessica and I finally in some round about convoluted way got my image to finally load.

Frustration

Ok so I worked on my designs in the computer. And it seems so simple..click the button that says upload...uploading picture...nothing there...how random. So I print the image out, its there. I scan the image into my computer..hit upload and nada.

So as a test of my skills I chose some random image in my files and guess what? 

TADA!!! We have an image of a barcode.

Inspired by this I try once again to upload my scanned image and I get nothing but an endless uploading screen and when finally complete there is a blank spot where my image should be.

Revised Sketches

These are the sketches I am putting up for critique today. I always want to get caught up in the font details and so this time I just used bodoni for my standard font. I feel like some of them will work better without the serifs attached or with more solid letterforms but thats is for another day.

Sketches,sketches and more sketches

I started these sketches feeling pretty good but a little stuck. There are not many logos for day spas for inspiration and even fewer for beauty salons. The client would like to retain a bird in the imagery which even though I know I don't have to do for my class designs, I wanted to try and figure out a way to keep the bird.

I was sort of excited when one of my doodles turned the "MJ" into a bird of sorts. I filed this idea in the back of my mind for further work because it would be easy to get super focused on this being the be all to end all of ideas. 

Anyways these are mostly typography...it is interesting that you can write a name so many different ways. Somewhere near the bottom of the page I had started goggling images of mint leaves and realized that maybe I could make lips out of mint leaves maybe, just maybe.

I worked some with the idea of the lips...and then went back to the typography of the letters because that is what I usually like working with the most.
So in the end I was blindsided by a series of migraines and while laying on the couch staring at the ceiling thinking about birds. I had only been considering cute little birds for the logo. Two semesters ago I did a project with a flamingo made entirely of phoenixes. The phoenix is a mythical bird that is a symbol of rebirth and an idea is born in my head. You go to the spa or beauty salon for a rebirth or rejuvenation so this may be an idea I go with for a few sketches.

More logos

So as we look for design inspirations we stumble across logos that just do not seem to work for us personally.
But from the same website I thought this one was fun

and finally a website that shows some examples of redesigns.

Cool websites

So this morning I was searching for inspiration for my rebranding logo. The first website I stumbled across a design and architecture firm. AvenueF studios has some textiles, logos and kitchen designs. I liked this log of theirs because of its simplicity.

Zookeeper had an interesting website with some interactive images as well.

As to logos I find to be interesting. I have always liked the Pixar logo.

Rebranding Martha Stewart

As I searched for an article it seemed that most were by companies that specialize in rebranding along with lists of what not to do when creating a new look for a company. While I read through these articles, I found the articles to be interesting but not enough to make me stop and think about what I was reading. I happened on the following article "Rebranding Martha Stewart" by Stephen Doyle on the AIGA website. This article written form the designers vantage discussed why he did certain things as well as showing photographs of the logo in use and of the rejected ideas.

The comments written in regards to the article were also helpful. One comment suggested that an example of a great rebrand will be if the viewer cannot bring to mind the original logo. Which made me stop and think. This is a show I watch daily and a magazine I buy monthly so what was that old logo again. I could not come up with what the logo looked like originally.