One major problem a user experiences when trying to stay on top of celebrity gossip on the Internet is that most celebrity news sites have a lack of direction and clear organization. Le Gossip aims to change all of that by striving to deliver better information on a more organized platform.

This quick project was the brainchild of my business partner Troy Osinoff and myself. Designing the Le Gossip brand was far from easy. We did extensive research on the pros and cons of typical celebrity news sites, took the typical headlines and photo albums and essentially made the path to information a more concise and easy for the visitor. The site is scheduled to hit the web early next week.

Logo Design Process
We wanted to position the site as being more MTV-cool and less TMZ-cheesy. The logo itself was made to appeal to young women and teens. It is clean and simple, but rough in a way that makes it look like Zac Efron’s hair when he wakes up in the morning. Here is the grid representation and kerning model for the logo:

Earlier versions of the logo I did seemed a little bit too kids-boppish and I think that this one does a really good job at staying more age-neutral, yet hip.

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

How do I use it? It’s simple! Simply visit the link above and press the “Lay it on me baby!” button. That’s it. Don’t like it? Click it again and presto change-o you’ve got a new one! Careful, though, some may already be in use! Wouldn’t that be a drag.

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.

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 most glaring problem I was facing with the previous two was that in small sizes the shape could be kind of lost. The logo designs started to feel really frail to me which is a far cry from the look I was going for. Today I am fairly certain that I am done tweaking it, though. This latest version seems to portray the boldness I had always hoped it would and reduces to even favicon size really well. While, the general shapes of all of the marks are still very similar (a shape which I love and I think really speaks very loudly), the personality supporting the 3 is drastically different, in my opinion.

It just goes to show you, some projects just never end