Logo Design Hangout

Consultation For Designers & Clients

It’s pretty clear that the Hangout feature of Google+ will is a great hit amongst a great many people with new uses for it being found almost every day.

Some of you may know that I have tinkered with The Logo Clinic where you could submit logo design questions and seek the advice and help of other designers etc. The clinic has been taking a breather whilst I focus on my own client work and getting up to speed with Google+, but the idea of using the hangout feature for a variation of The Logo Clinic has really inspired me to crank the general theme of the clinic up once again.

I have posted a few general statements via my Google+ steam about my intention to use hangouts to conduct a sort of logo design consultation — the feedback has been pretty positive — so I have decided to run with it and see how it all pans out.

Read Logo Design Hangout – Consultation For Clients & Designers on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. Explaining Logo Design Budgets to Clients
2. 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download
3. Freight Baggage Logo Design

After posting the Vintage VW Logo Specifications Sheet; one thing lead to another, and now I can present a reasonably faithful recreation of the Vintage VW Logo Specification Sheet.

Why the recreation?

No real reason other than I thought it would be a fun project to work on, but also the original lacks some quality so can’t be enlarged and printed out to well. I thought that if I reproduced it, warts and all, it would allow me a up close view of how this was originally created.

It’s not until you tear it apart and start looking at all the various line weights, arrows, text and the sobering realisation: we didn’t always have copy and paste and mathematical precision based artwork tools at our disposal.

It’s also nice to know there is now a detailed replica of these logo specification.

The original was crafted by hand, ink and ruler.

Image above is also the recreated version.

Imperfect perfection

It was tempting to balance all the unbalance aspects, to unify the type sizes and styles, to bring all the vertical and horizontal alignments to perfection but I didn’t. Using the enlarged version of the VW logo specification sheet that Steve Smith and Farzan Balkani found I was able to, reasonably accurately, reproduce the imperfect perfections of the original.

There are a few areas where I had to just suck it up and accept close was close enough. Some of the type styles are just impossible to nail as they look like they have been handwritten, and there is a mixture of a lettering set in a variant of Avant Garde Gothic.

So some of the lettering, should you feel the need to check my accuracy, will be close but not exact in style. What I have done is to ensure the spacing and placement of all elements is as accurate to the original as possible.

I have created two main versions which you can download.

1. The first poster will be as the first image in this post with blue elements on white, and is saved as both PDF and Illustrator .ai.
2. The second poster is as the original complete with faux textured paper, and is a high resolution A4 image at 300dpi. The textured background was created from scratch and not using stock scans of any kind. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s close enough for my purpose.

A thought

I am conscious of not creating too many variations of this so as to cause confusion over the prestigious nature of the original. For this reason, and this reason only, I have added a small credit that states this version is a reproduction.

I would ask, with respect to the original artwork, that you leave this credit in place—if posting variations online—so as to avoid this getting mixed up with the original.

Download Recreated-Vintage VW Logo Specification Poster

If you want to reblog this then I just ask that you link to this post and ZIP file.

Bonus Downloads

A few people muttered about a desktop wallpaper version so here we a couple of sizes to download.

Download 1920x1200px VW Wallpaper

Download 2560x1440px VW Wallpaper

Download 1680x1050px VW Wallpaper

Download iPhone 4 Retina Wallpaper

Read Recreated-Vintage VW Logo Specification Poster For Download on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download
2. Logo Specification Sheets – 5 Page Template For Download

I love me some Brand Identity Guideline Resources and you will see that in the past I have featured a variety of such brand book guidelines covering: 

• Skype
• I Love New York
• FourSquare
• Adobe
• Sony Vaio
• CISCO
• Santa Claus
• The Nazis 
• NASA (part 1 & part 2)

I keep searching for other prime examples of branding books, corporate guidelines, identity guides, and through out these searches I often stumble across some nice examples, but not examples that provide the WOW factor.

The WOW factor is more of personal opinion rather than a scientific method of assessing WOW from NON-WOW, but usually based on what I also feel other people will take note of.

The Bulging Sack of Brand Identity Guideline Resources is a collection of branding and identity guidelines resources that I have collected over time that will hopefully keep you busy for a short while. A few are a few years old, and you have likely seen around, but I also think a few could be new to you.

Massive thanks to Sasha Agapov @agapov for reaching out to me, and sending me CISCO, Best Buy and Ford brand guideline.

Bulging Sack of Brand Guideline Resources

The Oxfam Brand Book

Download The Oxfam Brand Guidelines

The Jamie Oliver Brand Book

Download Jamie Oliver Brand Guidelines Book

New York City Transit Authority Graphics Manual

View more photos of the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Manual
Found via Swiss Legacy

The Best Buy Brand Book

Download the Best Buy Brand Guidelines

The Ford Brand Book

Download the Best Buy Brand Guidelines

The Barbican Brand Guidelines

Download The Barbican Brand Guidelines
Found via AisleOne

The FearNet Brand Book

Download The FearNet Brand Book

The Easy Group Brand Manual

Download The easyGroup Brand Manual
Found via LogoDesignLove

Apple Identity Guidelines

Download Apple Identity Guidelines

The BBC GEL Styleguide

Download the BBC GEL Style Guide

Seagate Corporate Style Guide

Download the Seagate Corporate Style Guide

Vintage McDonalds Specification Manual

View more on Vintage McDonalds Specification Manual

The Propellerhead Brand Manual

Download the Propellerhead Brand Manual

The F-Secure Brand Identity Guidelines

Download the F-Secure Brand Identity Guidelines

The Skittles Brand Book

Download the Skittles Brand Book
Found via Couldal

Other Brand Guideline Resources

So as well as all those don’t forget I have featured the following brands on imjustcreative: Skype, I Love New York, FourSquare, Adobe, Sony Vaio, CISCO, Santa Claus, The Nazis and even Vintage NASA (part 1 & part 2).

Buy a Brand Book?

If you have some spare dosh you could head over to Blanka and buy some printed brand books with brands such as First Direct, Barbican and RAC.

Brand Guideline Links

Designing Style Guidelines For Brands And Websites - Smashing Magazine

Guidelines And Standards Manuals - IdentityWorks

Brand Identity – Computer Arts

List of Corporate Brand Guidelines – DesignersTalk

Single Page Logo Guideline Template – imjustcreative

Four Page Logo Guideline Template – imjustcreative

Online Brand Guidelines

Some companies don’t feel the need to create a brand book and so create a simpler online version. Penguin Logo Guidelines is one such example.

Brand Guideline Books

These are a few books on brand identity that I can highly recommend after having read them myself.

Book Overview: Brand Identity Essentials by Rockport

Logo Design Love by David Airey

Designing Brand Identity byAlina Wheeler

Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook by Wally Olins

On B®and by Wally Olins

The New Guide to Identity by Wolff Olins

Bonus Branding Book

The Pepsi brand book is really good for a giggle. Have to wonder what planet the design team/person was on when this was conceptualised, but regardless of home planet they certainly have a wicked sense of humour. Practical joke time.

Download the Pepsi Brand Book

Read Bulging Sack of Brand Identity Guideline Resources on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

No related posts.

Whilst digging around for more links to update my Bulging Sack of Corporate Identity Guideline Resources and finding more cool logo designs for LogoStack I came across an utter beauty of a website sensibly called A Website about Corporate Identity.

It is devoted to providing key bits of corporate identity information such as: designer/agency, typefaces, colours for literally 100′s and 100′s of brands.

A Website about Corporate Identity

The Resources section contains additional information about corporate identity, including a bibliography and links to related sites on the internet.

Furthermore, the site provides a catalogue containing descriptions of a large number of corporate identities.

View the entire catalogue over at A Website about Corporate Identity.

Read A Website about Corporate Identity, Logos and Brands on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

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1. London Victoria Gets a Stunning New Identity Designed by SomeOne

This is an updated version of my previous Logo design proposal/contract/estimate template which is still available for you to download should you want it.

I have made a number of changes to the first page, of this revised proposal, which provides more information on: pricing and deposit breakdowns, more detailed information on the scope of the project as well as expected final deliverables.

As my projects are getting more complex it has been necessary to cover all expectations right at the beginning, where as I used to be a little less detailed and more free flowing.

Worth bearing in mind that my proposal also acts as a loose contract and estimate in one as I like to keep it all together and under one roof. I find this makes it easier for each party to keep on top of those dreaded “expectations”, and provides a useful reference should there be any discrepancies further down the line.

Some of this may be overkill, and for some of you it may not even be close to detailed enough, but please feel free to take any inspiration you need from this.

I have not made any major changes to the other 4 pages, so these remain as the previous template.

Please note: I am not making any claims to how wrong/right/appropriate this template is. This is what I personally use, and has NOT had any kind of legal approval whatsoever. Please don’t take this template as being legally solid in any way, and I certainly do not intend to be blamed should any difficulties arise from your use of this template.

Download Logo Design Proposal Template

Read Updated: Logo Design Proposal Template for Download on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. Logo Specification Sheets – 5 Page Template For Download
2. 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download
3. How I Create A Logo Design Brief Using Gravity Forms & Template

If you are looking for a handy and accessible place to get some logo design inspiration then this Pinterest Logo board could be worth a visit. The above logo designed by Sam Soulek.

There are a few issues: there are many pinned direct from other inspiration websites such as FFFFound or Designspiration as well as other digest style inspiration websites. This means you are getting to see some of these great designs 2nd, 3rd or even 4th hand.

This unfortunately means some pinned images are practically divorced from the designers’ originating portfolio which means it is not easy to see who was responsible, or even providing simple credit links. Not a fan of inspiration websites that don’t make the effort to provide the most basic of link credit information.

There are a minority that are linked directly to Dribbble, and just a sprinkling that link direct to the designer. Not so great really.

Really would have liked to have seen more effort in pinning the direct rather than this lazier approach. It’s all very well saying you are helping spreading the news, but you are doing so in a way that is somewhat anonymous, and that doesn’t really benefit the designer, it just benefits you.

Given that Pinterest, unlike other inspiration websites, does actually provide quite a number of editing and pinning options there really isn’t much of an argument against the lazy pinning method.

I have used Pinterest to collect my own inspiration, but admittedly it’s just a little too easy to just lazily pin from where ever you are rather than track down the originating website. I have put my own inspiration collection board on hold until I can revisit and resolve this issue.

Read Logo Inspiration on Pinterest on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. Logostack—Real World Logo & Brand Identity Inspiration
2. My Google RSS Feed Reading List

I have had these logo specification sheets for Abacus Insurance Brokers (above) stuffed away in my digital archive in the cloud for a few months now, and didn’t even think that they might be of use to other people.

So in the same vein as my previous logo guideline and specification sheets: Single Page Logo & Four Page Logo & Identity Templates, I now proudly bring you the Logo Specification Sheets – 5 Pack Template For Download.

Little Background

During the development of the Abacus logo and identity redesign, it became apparent that a few versions of the logo would be needed. There is a version for the exterior building signage, one version for the website, a version for social media etc.

Each version of the logo had slightly different proportions and layout depending on the inclusion of the tag-line as well as the word ‘Brokers’. This would mean each physical logo requiring slightly different spacial requirements.

Made perfect sense to create a single logo guideline sheet for each variation to account for these differing spacial requirements, and by creating individual sheets we made the whole logo specification system a breeze to add to, update with and expand on.

5 Pack Template For Download

The download basically includes one Adobe Illustrator file with 5 individual pages. I have removed all instances of the Abacus logo and wording (as shown below), but retained the various backgrounds and grids which hopefully provides you with a decent structure to amend and alter as you see fit.

Each sheet shares a common right side which has information on the colour palette and typeface selections. The left side just alters a little depending on the logo proportions, so each sheet has a respectable continuity. You can see how each version of the Abacus logo looks if you take a quick look at the Abacus project page.

You’ll get a font warning upon opening as I haven’t converted any of the text to outlines so just substitute the missing fonts for your own. This should ultimately make it easier for you to customise.

If you find this download useful then please do share it, but please don’t re-purpose this as your own downloadable template. People have done that with my previous logo templates and that just really sucks.

→ Download 5 Pack Logo Specification Templates

Read Logo Specification Sheets – 5 Page Template For Download on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download
2. Abacus Insurance Brokers Brand Logo Specification Sheets

Have had a number of people ask me for a reading list of what websites I regularly read so I have started building a Reading List (it’s barely been started hence these intermediate downloads) page on imjustcreative. This will serve up a list of all the websites and provide individual RSS links. This is a side-project so will be a while before it’s complete so until then I have a quick solution to share.

I actually split my reading material into two different reading formats.

I have a bunch of RSS feeds hooked up through Google Reader as well as a number of feeds hooked up via FeedMyInbox (a cool service that allows me to subscribe and grab a feed of any website even if they haven’t made email subscriptions available).

There are some types of websites (mostly visual image heavy inspiration sites) where I prefer to get an email everyday rather than checking the more linear format of RSS. These come through once every day whereas Google feeds are updated on demand which I regularly check via Reeder on my iPhone.

So there we have it.

You can download the OPML/XML files for Google RSS and OPML/XML files for FeedMyInbox. These are most of the websites that provide me with the links that I frequently share on Twitter etc.

You’re very welcome.

There are some obvious omissions but I tend to always see their new posts tweeted online by other people, so this reduces my feed intake.

Read My Google RSS Feed Reading List on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

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1. Google Rewards High-Quality Sites Using White-Hat SEO

This Pantone Color Bridge document on Scribd is really very useful as an online reference for Pantone to CMYK colour conversions. I have previously written about the Pantone Color Bridge Swatch Books and how important these Pantone book are for any designer.

There are limitations with an onscreen version, namely you can’t see how a specific Pantone colour actually looks printed It is useful nonetheless as a casual reference guide in searching for CMYK value breakdowns of a Pantone colour.

There is nothing like having the actual printed Pantone Bridge swatch book to  hand. They are incredibly valuable when it comes to finding and specifying colours for a logo design. No one likes guess work with something as crucial as colour for a brand identity. Bonus feature with the Pantone Color Bridge books: you get the RGB and HTML conversion values along with CMYK.

Buying yourself a Pantone Color Bridge book is a solid tip from me, and nearly ranks along with: The Best Logo Design Advice I Can Give

K Found on Scribd

Read Pantone Color Bridge CMYK EC Cheat Sheets on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. A Question of Colour and a Pantone Coloured Bridge [AQFG]
2. Pantone Home and Office Stuff by ROOM Copenhagen
3. Pantone Superhero Posters by Gidi Vigo

I have been promising a download of the portfolio WordPress theme that I use here on imjustcreative for about 8 months now. Reason for the long delay is that the design has seen ongoing changes which has meant it’s been hard to pin down a version for download.

The initial design I said I would offer up for download now looks quite different to what I am using here on imjustcreative, but it is very similar to what I am still using over on Logo Stack .

The other reason for the delay is that the CSS and back-end code is pretty much all-over-the-place. Due to almost daily tweaks and changes which means it has been impossible to sit down and create an up-to-date theme with cleaned up code for purpose of making available as a WordPress Theme Download.

I am still tweaking imjustcreative which means for the foreseeable future I don’t see a point where we can create a finalised and polished version with clean code. However, I do know that many of you are still expressing an interest in getting your hands on whatever I make available even if it’s messy and dirty under-the-bonnet.

Alpha Release

With that in mind I have now decided to make available the WordPress Responsive Portfolio theme that is currently used on Logo Stack (above).

This is the raw and dirty Alpha release which means it’s not at all how I would like to eventually release the theme, but will provide you with something to get your fingers dirty on.

It should make a reasonable portfolio theme for you if you can spend some time polishing up the code and cleaning up the dirty edges.

It’s far from perfect, and there are far better ‘proper’ responsive themes out there, but it may be useful as a start.

Licence

I still plan to release a cleaned up version of the Logo Stack theme as well as the theme that I use here on imjustcreative. Until that moment you are free to do what you like with this version, but I do ask that you just keep the small link back to me in the footer. I would like to track the general usage of this theme so I can work out how much work to put in the preparation of the main theme with cleaned up code.

You are welcome to make this credit text smaller and style it how you wish, but please keep it somewhere visible on every page.

A Few Notes

The Logo Stack theme is set-up with one index.php page (above) and single.php page which shows the individual posts. The index.php displays the Featured Post Image as you can see above and links back to the single.php.

You can alter how many images display on the home page. At the moment I have 3 rows with 3 columns, but you could have 2 rows with 10 columns, 4 rows and 20 columns etc. You could also remove the sidebar if you want a full width portfolio page. The screenshot below shows (red dot) the number to change how many rows. If you want 4 rows then change 3 to 4 etc.

To change the amount of columns you need to change how many posts display in WordPress DashBoard:- Settings:- Reading Settings.

The sidebar is currently hard-coded with the drop-down category and tag menus, but does have the Widget code placed at the end of sidebar.php. If you want to place widgets you can and these will display at the bottom, or you can remove the drop-down code so that the widgets appear top of the side-bar.

I have removed the social share buttons found end of posts in single.php, but I have left space for you to add you own with a comment, “Insert Social Share Code”. There is room to add 4 regular share buttons as below:

Obviously change the personal and contact information in the footer and anywhere else you might find it.

The theme is partially responsive in that it works reasonable well on iPhone, but is not yet fully optimised for tablet formats.

You’ll likely have to play around with things like search.php, archives.php etc as these are still not refined even on the Logo Stack theme currently in use.

Comes With NO Support

This theme is provided as is with no technical help or support. I can’t stress enough how untidy the back-end code is so if you are not familiar with CSS, HTML and PHP you may struggle.

Based On

This responsive WordPress theme is based on the framework called Foundation, developed by Zurb. This framework was then developed into a barebones WordPress theme by https://github.com/drewsymo/Foundation.

If you need technical information on how the responsive side works then head over to Zurb for full documentation.

You can read more on my own experiences with the above: http://imjustcreative.co.uk/minimal-responsive-wordpress-theme/

Additional Development

Additional code development has been kindly provided Shane Hudson who is currently working on the Beta release of this imjustcreative (Logo Stack) WordPress theme. The Beta release will gave much cleaner CSS and PHP as well as more code comments and a generally nicer looking back-end to play with.

Shane is tasked with cleaning up all my messy coding. Anything messy or unbelievably shit looking will be down to me and not Shane.

Download

Download imjustcreative (Logo Stack) WordPress Theme

Read Alpha Release: The imjustcreative Responsive Portfolio WordPress Theme on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

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2. Logo Portfolio Redesigned
3. Iconify—An Online, Responsive, Minimal & Downloadable Portfolio App

A Logo Design Brief Form Using Gravity Forms

This is quick summary of Gravity Forms which I use to create my Logo Design Brief Form as well as providing you with a PDF template of it for you to download.

I have previously posted a few articles detailing how I go about collecting information for the logo design brief. In these earlier dark dark days I relied extensively on Google Doc’s to provide the means to display and collect this crucial information, and then send it back to me. So very dark.

There are a number of issues that bothered me using Google Doc’s. The main one was that it meant the client having to leave my website in order to visit the link to the external Google document which was bad. So very bad.

There was also the fact that it was hard to really make it look half decent as well as the collected information being a real pig to read, view, collect in a readable manort. If you then received confirmation on your particular mobile device—something that frequently happened—that a client had filled in the form, then I think it’s fair to say you would be a little stuck in trying to view said form on your mobile device.

In general Google Doc’s was not best suited for performing the mission of displaying, collecting and viewing this client brief.

Introducing Gravity Forms

My search to find an internal solution lead me to Gravity Forms which can also work alongside WordPress as a plug-in.

I enlisted the technical help of my elf developer, who can be summoned by calling Mr Shane—every designer needs their own Elf Developer, to move the data from Google Doc’s to Gravity Forms. In hindsight it was something that I could have done, but I did get overwhelmed with the choices of CSS styling, and my brain blew up. Mr Shane ‘Elf’ Hudson was their to wipe the sticky pieces of brain slop.

If you are looking for a method to collect this vital client information, and have tried other external options, then I might suggest you give Gravity Forms a try. It certainly can be a beast of a software application, and is certainly has potential to be a very detailed and powerful data collection system, but in the end it proved simple to create my own internal Logo Design Brief Form.

I also use Gravity Forms to create a simple Contact form on my Contact page.

One of the best aspects of Gravity Forms is that when a client now fills in the form a full copy is emailed to me in a easy-to-view format (below). This email is well presented and comes with all the relevant section titles, whereas Google Doc’s just sent the actual filled in information without the headers.

I have divided my own Logo Design Brief Form into 5 separate pages to make the form more manageable as to have it all on one page is a little daunting; another area that Google Doc’s fails at.

When you have created your form you can then easily insert into your WordPress page/post by means new icon that appears in your post edit box which drops in a single short-code. It’s just so flipping useful.

Visual confirmation is also another area that Gravity Forms kicks ass. You have full control over who and how someone is notified that they have filled in a form. Simple and obvious things, but it’s all here.

There are far too many aspects of Gravity Forms for me to go in into detail, but rest assured I am incredibly chuffed with the power, flexibility and ease that Gravity Forms now provides.

There are a few licensing options: I opted for the Personal Licence which costs around $39.00, and you can see a full list of Full Features if you are interested. There is also a Gravity Forms Demo for those curious types who don’t like commitment.

Introducing My Logo Design Form Template

I am still in the process of tweaking the logo design form in terms of wording and design, but you can see the working form over on the Hire Me page.

In order to see all the pages you would ordinarily have to fill in the form as many fields are ‘required’, but I have especially created, just for you, a PDF of each page with 5 in total.

Now you can see quickly how I have set-up this logo design form as well as the various drop-down menu’s, fields and questions in case you are looking for some help creating your own logo design brief form.

Please feel free to download these PDF’s and use them as a template as you see fit. What’s mine, is yours. :)

Download my Logo Design Brief Form in PDF

Read How I Create A Logo Design Brief Using Gravity Forms & Template on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download
2. Logo Specification Sheets – 5 Page Template For Download

Pixel-fitting By Dustin Curtis

This explanation of the crucial art of Pixel-Fitting by Dustin Curtis is probably the best one out there. Dustin explains the importance of Pixel-Fitting, a pixel precision routine, using tasty diagrams and clear English.

Pixel-Fitting can be tricky, but I think that with these really useful diagrams you’ll come away pretty feeling good about it.

K Read more on http://dcurt.is/pixel-fitting

Read Insightful Explanation Of Pixel-fitting By Dustin Curtis on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

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1. Apple Macintosh Icon Prints By Susan Kare: The Original Apple Icon Designer
2. Pantone Color Bridge CMYK EC Cheat Sheets
3. How I Create A Logo Design Brief Using Gravity Forms & Template

8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download

Along with my other logo guidelines and specification templates available to you, I now have added this 8 page logo sheet and style guide as a downloadable template.

The ‘grape’ logo is a current project I am working on, and so these guidelines have been designed specifically for the client. It’s not fully complete as I have yet to add details on the stationery, further info on how the logo can be used etc, but these eight pages provide the main details.

This guideline template is a little different to my previous ones as it incorporates a page of iOS application icons which go hand-in-hand with the project, more info on the typefaces as well as providing a final artwork logo sheet.

I have also summarised the seven main pages of logo, typestyle, colour and icon guidelines into a One Page Summary as a convenient extra for the client.

Please Note

I have removed all instances of the ‘grape’ logo from the template, and replaced the icons with black placeholders. I realise it then looks a little naked, but just used the guidelines I had in place as positional to place your own logo, and then adapt those guides as needed.

It’s more about just being able to provide you with something to get you a head start in you own project. This should all still provide you with a sound base to adapt your own logo sheet and guide from. You can download the template from the following link.

All fonts have been converted to outlines and I have provided both .ai and PDF versions. If you require another format, then please drop me a line in the comments and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Hope you might find it useful.

Download 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template

Read 8 Page Logo Specification Book Template for Download on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

Related posts:

1. Logo Specification Sheets – 5 Page Template For Download
2. How I Create A Logo Design Brief Using Gravity Forms & Template

Interesting web based application in the form of makeappicon.com The simple idea is to slip in your 1024px icon master then makeappicon hurls out a number of popular app icon size for both iOS and Android.

I tried it ‘oh so quickly with my simple grape iOS app icon and it gave me 10 new app icon sizes in about 3 seconds.

Please note that I have not opened up and checked these individual files for quality, signs of degradation or other ‘too good to be true’ unwanted pixel scenarious.

I always create each app icon size manually so as to be able to ensure the whole pixel-fitting is in order, and would hazard a guess that makeappicon.com wouldn’t be able to automagically do this.

However, even if the individual icons are not 100%, the fact that you have a simple and quick means to knock out some provisional app icons for testing etc is a huge potential time saver for when you are at the early stages of the icon design and just want to get a quick feel for how the design will look in-situ and at smaller sizes. Plus, even if you don’t want to rely on it for individual icon sizes you still get a quick way to get an iPhone phone mock-up with icon in place with text.

It’s definitely worth a go especially as it’s FREE!

» Via: http://makeappicon.com

Read Mini Review—Makeappicon: Generate app icons of all sizes in a click! on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

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2. Apple’s Icon Ecosystem By Chris Sauve
3. Some iPhone & iTouch Application Icon Ideas

Been very busy with client work of late, and so I decided to cut back on elements of blogging and twitteresque activities in order to better focus on the job at hand.

With that has come a nice sense of freedom and clarity, as well as leaving more time to deal with the annual accounts of a self-employed logo designer.

Have nearly managed to get my accounts done in time for Christmas, which compared to last year is a massive improvement. Last year my poor accountant got my accounts around the 27th January!

This time round I have focused a lot more on ‘expenses’ and being quite rigourous with what I can claim as an ‘expense’.

So, I’m somewhat curious, as a self-employed/freelance designer: what sort of things do YOU claim legitimate expenses for? Feel free to leave comments below as a helpful list for others.

Some things I have added to my ‘expenses’:
• Paypal Fee’s
• International SWIFT/CHAP’s process fee’s
• Portion of household and premise utility bills (work from home)
• Studio refurbishment (3rd bedroom): decorating materials etc.
• Certain car expenses: mileage, parking, partial cost of buying car etc.
• Client work and consultation.
• Accountancy book keeping fee’s. NOT preparation of tax returns!
• Advertising & Marketing: imjustcreative branded printing and stationery costs etc.
• Books & research: Self tuition/learning/training costs
• Computer Equipment & accessories
• Mobile phone bills
• BT Broadband bills
• Stationery & Postage
• Occasional client related expenses: meals, travel etc.
• Directory submission costs: logo galleries etc.
• Hosting & domains: 123-Reg, York Networks
• Web app subscriptions: Freshbooks, Vaultpress, Cage, Flickr, Evernote etc
• Application, software & typeface purchases for: Macintosh, iPhone and Android

Read Designer Expenses: What Do You Claim For? on imjustcreative - logo & brand identity design portfolio and blog.

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