2.10.2009



Naked Décor Logo and Stationery
Design a logo and stationery system (letterhead, envelope, business card) for the Naked Décor brand of products.

About Naked Décor

Naked Décor is a designer and producer of stylish home accessory products such as throw pillows, wall art, clocks, and dinnerware. The products are sold online through the company’s own website, through its printed catalogs, and through over 150 in-store retailers nationwide.

Target Audience

Urban young professionals 35 and under with incomes of $50,000 and over. They appreciate stylish items, keep up with fashion and trends, and enjoy decorating their own living spaces. They tend to subscribe to multiple home and fashion magazines. Mostly women, but many high style-oriented men too.

Competition

Home accessory items such as Naked Décor’s are discretionary purchases by stylish consumers; so competition could be thought of as that new dress or a night out on the town (example: a typical throw pillow costs $50.) Competitors of similar home accessory products include Jonathan Adler and Thomas Paul.

Key Messages
• The products are modern and contemporary. The tone is very playful, even fanciful and sexy.
• Naked Décor products will enliven your home and your life.
• Buy my home accessory products.

Ideal Audience Response

I want Naked Décor items in my home. I’d also like to give them as gifts.

Required Text
The logo must include the name “Naked Décor.” Include the firm’s tagline, “Designed for Your Desire,” on stationery items (but it does not have to be part of the logo itself).

Inks
Open


Mounting Instructions

2.03.2009

1.27.2009



First off, don't ever spell stationery this way (unless of course you're describing something not moving). Secondly, check out the clever black&white logos here and then a truckload of logos here.

1.15.2009



One of the best (and deceptively simple) logos of all time. I could ramble on about logos, but i think JSB Morse nails it:

If you are a consumer, or a marketer, or a CEO of a company looking for branding, you should be interested in logos. Logos are the centerpiece of a company’s brand image and can tell you a lot about the company. The quality of a logo can tell the consumer how much their image (and customer opinion) means to that company. The effectiveness of a logo can help sell whatever product or service that the company offers. Also, the beauty of a logo is something that the company can be proud of and identify with.

Branding is the most important aspect of a company’s marketing strategy and should be heavily considered. Companies that took their branding lightly during their inception may suffer in the long run. This happens even if their service or product is great, because their logo is unprofessional, confusing, or offensive. Companies with bad logos may not be taken seriously or worse, they may be made a butt of a joke.
There are four principles that make for a great logo design. A great logo must:

• follow solid basic design principles
• be functional
• represent the company
• be unique

A Great Logo Must Follow Basic Design Principles

This may be the most obvious necessity for great logos. The logo must be soundly designed and look good. The aesthetic appeal of a logo, or any piece of art or design for that matter, is subjective and relative to a person’s mood when they view the logo. However, there are fundamentals of design that must be followed to ensure that a logo will appeal to anyone.

The fundamentals include, but are not limited to space, color, form, consistency, and clarity. It is recommended that a design professional have some influence on your logo, whether it be redesign or touching up, to ensure basic design principles are followed.

What may result otherwise is a logo that looks like a third grader designed it. The story of the child who designed the Nike logo is amusing, but it is false. In fact, a design intern at Nike named Caroline Davidson came up with the idea in 1971 for $35. But much more effort was put into the design after the initial concept. The logo started as a simple design idea for a stripe to be placed on a shoe that an economics professor designed. What resulted was a universally known logo that works on apparel as well as the internet or print designs.

A Great Logo Must Be Functional
Logos are the most important marketing pieces for a company because it must represent that company in many different contexts and still get the message across. A logo may be seen on the web, in a brochure, on a t-shirt, or on glassware. It could be used on dark backgrounds, on light backgrounds, on textured surfaces, or could be used in various sizes like on an awning or on a postcard. A major indication of a poorly designed logo is graphic effects that can be added in Photoshop like 3D embossing, shadows, glares, or photo imagery. It's important to know that simplicity does not mean that the logo is missing anything. In fact, to aid in functionality, the logo must be simple.

A great logo must have the ability to be printed or used in all of the contexts mentioned above and still represent the company effectively. A few things that are important when talking about functionality are the simplicity, scalability, color, and depth. It’s important to the functionality of a logo that it’s not too intricate and that it doesn’t incorporate things like gradients or shadows as integral parts of the design. When the logo is reduced in size or placed on a loud background, it should retain its integrity. In addition, the logo should allow for two color presentation, such as black on white, as it would be on a t-shirt.

A Great Logo Must Represent the Company

A logo needs to represent the company it serves. This means that the style must be easily identified with the industry/product/service and must give a clear picture of what is being marketed. If a company is selling auto parts, a delicate script font would not capture the essence of the company. A suitable font would be bold and sturdy-looking. A logo sets the tone for the company. This applies to single-serving logos like Dasani or a multipurpose logo like NBC. In the case of Dasani, we are given a clean, smooth, cold-looking logo to represent water and with NBC we are given with a multicolored peacock representing the different divisions of NBC. Originally the logo was created to show enhancements in color broadcasting, also a good representation.

A great logo must encompass the entire company too, not just one aspect of it. In the 60s, AT&T had a bell logo which represented the clarity of sound and references Bell Telephone Laboratories. In 1984, AT&T introduced a logo representing a wider range of services and a more modern look to reflect the major advances that the company helped invent like the transistor, the solar power cell, and unix operating system.