Logos

what are logos?

Logo is symbol or graphic mark to identify products.

It is important because it can become cultural, it can represent the artist/ band. People might recognized the logo more than the name of the products. Logo is easier to remember than the name. Names are made by letter, but logos can be written by different fonts and having unique graphic marks can stand out.

There are 7 types of logos:

abstract mark
mascot logo
combination mark
emblem logo
lettermark
pictorial mark
wordmark

How are they used by bands/ artists?

The logos are everywhere. The logos will be print on merchandise, album, poster rather than names of artists/ bands. People buy things just for the logos after the artists/ bands got famous.

(Example: ACDC)

Logos also help the artists/ bands to stand out from the crowd, in order to stand out is to make it look good and relate to the artists/ bands.

Example

Queen

This logo is a combination of the name and the graphic image. Queen this name really goes well with the image, because they both having royal feeling.

This logo relates to the artist, if we look close to the details we can see:

A Crab, which suggests Cancer - means Brian May (19 July 1947)
Two Lions, which suggests Leo - means Roger Taylor (26 July 1949) and John Deacon (19 August 1951)
Two fairies at the bottom, which means Virgo - Freddie Mercury (5 Sep. 1946)

The logo can also deliver a vibe or feeling of the band to the audiences that the band is powerful and they are the top.

My Design (explain genre)

1. Nate

At first I did a mind map just to help myself understand his character and what do I want to include in his logo.

at first I wanted to make a combination mark just make some fun with his name. Thinking of his name, I was think what can N, A, T, E become.
Then I thought about telephone pole for T, as now we use phones a lot and kind of means signal, fast, and new generation.
From the point of telephone pole, I thought about warning sign.
Nate is a male singer with good looking, so I thought electrical warning should suit him. Especially targeting female audiences, so I designed a heart with electric sign.
I want him to be like by male and female, he is more like a teenager singer who represent new generation, not just a hot singer winning girl's heart. I changed the heart and I saw a caution sign of animals in the area. I thought that can be the right one for Nate. This is giving audience a vibe that, 'watch out, teenagers is around.', teenagers break the rules and make mess.
I researched many sign and waring sentence, and my final work looks like:

In the logo we can see, Nate on a car, which suggest, he is young and rich. Also, relates to hip hop genre. The flag on the car says, Nate, and at the bottom, Nate is bigger than the other words. Having names over the logo helps to promote the artists. I used the same font as the waring sign.

I put the logo onto some merchandises:

There are name cards, tape, leaflets, notebooks and photo book cover, shopping bag etc.

2. Mika

I chose Mika because I want to design Indie genre music artist. I want to keep this logo simple.

Same as before, I did a mind map first.

Then I thought about the album artwork, there is a whale on the cover and Mika's personality is like quiet and low vibe, which reminds me of 52 Hz whale's story.

So starting from 52 Hz whale I designed many different version of logo. At first I mainly focused on the Hz graph combining with Mika this name.

I did not like any of those because I feel like it was too much for Mika, so I wanted to keep it simple. I thought about physic equation.

From here I selected the symbols, and I came up with

This version is pretty abstract, but this can represent Mika pretty well. If the first v turn up side down then this would be M, and there are A in there. If I move down the first v and connect them together would turn out as frequency graph. This is just a symbol/ logo, it can be written and present in many other way, in different fonts etc.

3. Holly Ship

First step is mind map, HollyShip is a rock band. Their character is more like rebellious. I thought about pictures like ship. 'Holly' this word is very spiritual, and I thought about ship to heaven. Linking with the name I thought about SHIP, ladder ( look like H) and heaven. From heaven and ship these ideas remind me of life buoy, which save people and normally we found them on ship. Combining with the band's style and character, I thought the idea of break the life buoy.

The Final: