When I was designing Make A Dare, I really wanted to highlight the major features and let the new user know what they were in for right away on the landing page. On its homepage, I put in a big banner the general concept of the site.

Watch – Check out the crazy things our members are doing everyday!

Join – Why just sit there when you can be a part of Make A Dare?

Dare – Got something you want to see? Dare someone to do it!

Vote – Like what you see? Hype it! Think it’s lame? Diss it!

Compete – Earn streetcred by completing dares and impressing your friends and fans.

Beneath the banner I placed a large featured video section to give a general sense of the type of dares one could expect to see/complete on Make A Dare. This is followed by a featured user and the most popular dares on the site. Upon seeing all of this, I believe it is immediately recognizable just what kind of a fun, addicting site this can be.

The second likely landing page was the individual dare video page. On this page we see clearly in the title what the dare is, how much streetcred has been earned so far and who completed the dare. We also have social sharing buttons in the title section. On the right side we put a section for “more about the dare” which explains the dare more in depth in case it wasn’t clear from the title, as well as a section for what the user had to say about the dare and which other people had completed the dare previously. There is also a related media section at the bottom of the page which encourages deeper site navigation for a new user and fuels addiction to the site.

Although typically referred to as “Jackass meets YouTube,” we really wanted to emphasize in both the design and concept that this was not just a site to show how much pain you could withstand, but was also a site about how much fun you can have out in public or in your own bedroom. In reality, the dares range from the funny, humiliating, gross, off-the-wall, to painful. Because of this, the design really stays away from being really crazy and all over the place and really sticks to clean and fun.

Sign up at Make A Dare and find out for yourself just how fun and addicting this new social network is.

Last weekend I had a really interesting project. I redesigned and developed an existing site called MakeAGif.com to make it more user friendly and to give it a nice boost in traffic. MakeAGif is a clever site that was started by my favorite partner in crime, Troy Osinoff, that lets users create an animated .gif online out of still images they have on their computer in just 3 easy steps. The main problems with the old version were that it was hard to figure how to make a gif and once you had made it you were redirected to a page that was only temporary. Check out the old site by clicking the picture to the left.

With the new redesign, there are clear steps laid out to animating your gif and the form options are much easier to use. The script used to create the gif is a lot more fast and efficient now, as well. Once your gif is uploaded, instead of being redirected to a temporary page, you are redirected to a “Share Page” where you can link your gif to your blog, website, facebook and twitter pages.

Along with improving the UI and speed, I was able to implement some new features to the site. The most notable is the photo booth which allows you to take pictures directly from your webcam on the website and create a gif from from them instantly. I also had the site translated into Spanish and created a sister site called Animados Gif to be more user friendly to our Spanish-speaking traffic.

Since implementing the share pages and other features, traffic on the site has almost doubled in less than 3 days, with more people sharing and hosting their gifs right on Make A Gif, rather than uploading them elsewhere and sharing. Be sure to check out the redesign and to use the photo booth. Trust me, it’s addicting.

Further reading on Chermayeff & Geismar can be done on this article from Logo Design Love and this article from AIGA.

Tube by Julian Hrankov

Ajeva by Julian Hrankov

Forza by Cris Labno

Badona Typeface by Oguzhan Ocalan

Practicum by Lapin Design

Armenian Foods by Haik Avanian

Design Works by Jesse Kaczmarek

Koenig Architektur by Muggie Ramadani

Well there you have it. I think that much can be learned by merely observing and studying the brilliance of others and I think that this group of designers did a wonderful job of teaching. Not have they taken me down a peg or two, they have managed to make me extremely jealous and to inspire me – a rare thing.

Designer Credits: Cris Labno, Julian Hrankov, Oguzhan Ocalan, Muggie Ramadani, Jesse Kaczmarek, Lapin Design, Haik Avanian

Minima is my under construction Logo Design Portfolio where I will showcase the design elements of my job in a more in depth and creative way than is possible on this site.

The most important thing with the minima logo was to communicate the name in the most appropriate (minimal) way, while still producing something that was unique and memorable. I knew right away that I wanted to do a custom logotype. Here is a grid representation of the logo:

I like using grid representations in this manner because it really helps you see minute details or inaccuracies you might not see with the naked eye. As you can see, by using a lowercase “a” instead of an uppercase “A” the logo is much more cohesive and the whitespace is more consistent throughout. Not only does the lowercase “a” balance the logo better, it also made the logo a touch more unique.

My inspiration for the style of “a” that I used was Chalet Paris 1960 which actually showcases my favorite “a” in typography. Here are side by side comparisons between the minima “a” and the Chalet Paris 1960.

The major similarities between the two reside in the bowl where the curves are nearly spot on. The only in your face difference is in the spur where I decided to keep it straight to maintain consistency in the type. There are maybe more similar “a’s” out there, but like I said, Chalet’s was where I drew my inspiration from.

The end result of this logo ended up being everything that I wanted it to be. It is simple, memorable, minimal.

Frank O’Driscoll
E-Revenue Project Manager
American Cancer Society
Eastern Division, Inc.

How I design a logo
The most important part of designing a logo for me is learning about the business I am designing for. As hard as it is to do sometimes, I try to pull out every ounce of information I can about a person or establishment and typically the ones who are able to give the most information about their target, their service, their competitors and what makes them unique are the ones who end up receiving the best quality of work.

Businesses are like people – no matter how similar they may appear, you can bet there are a lot of differences. I’ve never had to two clients in the same industry describe their business exactly the same. My goal is to make that business’s logo reflect its persona, its personality and to make it speak to its target. If I am designing a logo for a construction company, what kind of construction do they do? What sizes of budgets do they work with? Who are their typical clientele? If I’m designing a logo for a construction company that typically constructs low-income housing, you can bet their logo is going to be miles apart from one that constructs office buildings downtown.

Now that I know more about who I am working with, I start to get ideas flowing. I am an atypical logo designer in that I do not like to sketch my ideas out on paper. I have an innate ability to piece things together in my head and actually can see things more in my mind than my hand is even able to draw. A great thing about designing from the head, too is that if you have a good idea you are going to remember it. If you can remember an idea you had 3 hours earlier while you were at the grocery store and you are able to construct it in Adobe Illustrator when you get home, it’s a good sign that you are perceiving a good logo. Why? Because memorability is the most important thing about logo design. If I don’t remember the idea I was having it is either because it was too complex or just wrong. Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that sketching is a detriment to my design process.

Communication through design
Another important thing that plays into the memorability in a logo design how well it communicates with the business it represents. Not only do we want a consumer to remember the *face* of the design, we want them to remember the whole package that it represents. This is not completely reliant on the logo design itself, a lot has to do with additional branding such as advertisement design, but that’s why we need to make a strong, brandable logo. We need something we can build a body around. A logo isn’t going to be very memorable if we can’t put it on anything or if it gets lost in the mix of an advertisement. It should be able to stand up to the design or image around it.

How can you use this information?
If you are planning on hiring a designer, well… hire me because I can get the job done right . If you don’t hire me, hire another professional with a strong portfolio and a solid client list. Do not crowdsource your logo or have a logo designed in a hurried manner, have it done by someone who wants to learn about you and about your business and is willing to spend the time necessary to do so. You should also be willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for your design even if funds are tight. Logo design is not done in a day and does not require only a day’s wage. If you hire a designer to do your logo, they may end up offering better deals on things like websites, stationery and advertisement designs since they are already quite familiar with your business and your branding direction.

If you are a young designer trying to better yourself, I encourage you to figure out what process works for you and to study other successful brands in the marketplace to get a better idea of what has worked for different industries. I also encourage you to learn from people who have experience in design and are way better at it than you are. Watch a Paul Rand interview, for instance. See what made his head work. My favorite course in college was a History of Graphic Design course and it was invaluable to see what others had done before me.

Take this for what it is
This is just my opinion on a very subjective matter. It is sort of my stream of consciousness and since my mind is always moving, somethings may have been a little unclear or incomplete and if you would like to hear more or get clarification, feel free to comment. As always, if you can prove me wrong or you disagree about something, I would love to hear about it and I encourage you to share it with others.

The Dexter introduction is an admirable combination of eerie and interesting. From cutting himself shaving, to splattering hot sauce on eggs, they chose the right lighting, music and routine items the whole way through. It’s a perfect mood-setter for the certain tension and anxiety you’ll be feeling as the episode progresses.

2. Mad Men (AMC)

Composed to RJD2’s A Beautiful Mine, Mad Men’s intro is both creative and simple. There are a lot of things great about this introduction. The choice to use a silhouette, as opposed to say a full character was brilliant in that it could be any one of us in that daily grind. The clever color choices are also a standout in this intro in that they are used sparingly and really reflect well against the overall paleness of the scene.

3. Six Feet Under (HBO)

I’m not sure what it is about Michael C. Hall, but great introductions seem to follow him. Along with Dexter, Six Feet Under is the boasts a wonderful soundtrack another great sequence. Following several shots filled with dull lighting and muted colors, you are smacked in the face with a perfectly bright blue and green landscape, at the center of which sits a single tree that quickly fades into the Six Feet Under logo, which by the way is one of my favorites in the history of television.

4. Lord of War

Lord of War begins with one of the most compelling opening sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie. The scene, known as “Journey of the Bullet,” is played to the tune of For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield and depicts a bullet’s lifespan from production, to shipping, to the inevitable shooting.

5. Weeds (Showtime)

Weeds is the perfect example of how to take an introduction that is good and destroy in your latest seasons. The Weeds opening sequence in season 1 was produced to the great, original rendition of Malvina Reynolds’ song Little Boxes and the shots were a witty and literal interpretation of the song. While seasons 2 through 4 used the same opening sequence, they cleverly switched out Little Boxes with a new cover each episode. Standouts for me include covers by Regina Spektor, Michael Franti, the Decemberists, Randy Newman and Rise Against. In season 5, Jenji Kohan and Weeds decided to ditch the original opening in favor of a different 10 second piece of garbage each episode, of which I don’t remember one scene.

6. The Royal Tenenbaums

Prologue to the Royal Tenebaums

Since I couldn’t find a good embed for this video, the link will have to do. The Royal Tenenbaums opens with original music by Mark Mothersbaugh (common in Wes Anderson flicks) followed by a take on Hey Jude by The Mutato Muzika Orchestra and the deep-voiced, raspy narration of Alec Baldwin. This opening sequence does a great job introducing each character in the movie and provides a great foundation for the rest of the flick. It is captioned by the unmistakeable Wes Anderson classic typeface, Futura Bold which I have always considered to work perfectly with his shooting style.

7. True Blood (HBO)

I have only had the pleasure of watching this show for a few episodes, but I have seen the intro well over a hundred times. The imagery, the soundtrack, the typography – all spot on. The sequence plays to Bad Things by Jace Everett and the way that the scenes hold the tempo and emotion of the song is truly compelling and a work of art. I also figured I’d include this one on the list while vampires were still in.