Summerfest Image Boards [please excuse the whitespace]

Concept One: The first concept is one that is abstract, poppy, and has lots of energy through patterns that are gestural and imply movement along with pops of bright and intense colors. I was also inspired by text as a simple label. I think this would appeal to both the current audience as well as a younger audience, as it is reserved and modern while still maintaining a relaxed and fun energy.

Concept Two: This second concept takes a more classic approach, with a modern twist. The patterns are very contemporary and match the curvature of many of the instruments used in the orchestra. The goal behind this concept is to embody sensibility while mimicking the energy of the instruments and the musicians through pattern, design, and color.

Concept Three:
The final concept is one that is based on natural fibers, materials, and colors found within nature. It features a more limited color palette to create a unified look among the patterns. This concept relates to the community-friendly and local attributes of Summerfest. The colors are warm with some yellows and greens, but heavy on neutrals, calling out the wood tones and patterns within the instruments of the orchestra.

Summerfest Concerts, Inc: Preliminary Research

Summerfest Concerts is a Chambers Orchestra of Kansas City that provides the community with performances in the summer, and does community outreach in the winter months.


1. What is the single purpose of Summerfest?
to perform for and interact with the community
2. Who is the target audience?
the Kansas City area
3. What does the audience expect from Summerfest?
pleasing music, a cultural experience
4. What are Summerfest's core values?
local, community, relatable
5. What are the long-term goals?
establish a long-term audience, broaden the audience, more energy and advertising
6. What distinguishes them from competitors?
all members are Kansas City-based, play the music of new and living composers, community-outreach


Brand Attributes:
 - more informal than formal
 - more public than intimate
 - more modern than classic
 - more warm than cool
 - more adult than child
 - more sophisticated than naive
 - more organic than industrial
 - more urban than rural
 - more reserved than edgy
 - gender-neutral
 - affordable
 - regional


Word Association:
calm, professional, community, grassroots, creative, casual, interactive, cultural, contemporary, warm, common, local, year-round, stability, comfort, success, leisure, relaxation

successful logos.

Here are some successful (and not so successful) logos I have found while doing some research for the Summerfest logo. More specifically, these are re-designs of pre-existing logos, something especially relevant to our current project!

The NFL logo is widely used, and widely reproduced, especially on clothing. Because of this factor, the company wanted a logo that was more legible and more easily mass-produced. I think losing the curly serif on the 'L' and adding intensity to the blue, as well as simplifying the number of stars all work together well to create a legible and easily recognized logo.

A lovely example of simple is better. Though the first logo conveyed the scientific material of the channel well by using an orbiting Earth, the second works even better as it is fast to recognize and fast to read. Choosing to design the logo after an element on the Periodic table is extremely successful, and an almost obvious idea. The end result is a clean, recognizable logo.


Now for the less successful...

A big "woops" in my opinion. Gap has since changed their logo back, due to public outcry from designers and consumers alike. Not only does the revision look thrown together and plain, but it doesn't say Gap as well as the previous logo had. In some cases, it seems that such an iconic logo should not be innovated.

This re-design is simply confusing to me. I understand that the company is a TV station, and that a new logo could better convey this, but the photoshopped, cropped MySpace picture they included in the revision just isn't working.

What do you think?
You can view more logo re-designs HERE and HERE.

signs, indexes, and symbols

sign: an entity which signifies another entity
thunder is a sign of a storm
the biohazard sign has no visual relationship to what it represents

symbol: an object, picture, written word, or sound that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.
names are symbols that represent individuals
a red octagon is a symbol for "stop"

index: have a correlation in space and time with its meaning
body language is an example of an index of emotions
a wave is a symbol of a greeting

"This Means That" notes:

- This text discussed the differences between and types of symbols, signs, and indexes. In addition, the text discusses how we as individuals and humans as a collective interpret these signs and symbols. I loved how the book was interactive, as it allowed me to discover for myself how I view the meanings of symbols, giving me a greater understanding of how potential clients could view symbols and indexes used in icons. The meanings of some symbols and icons could be more recognizable to the designer, and not picked up on by the consumer.

- Some symbols where the relationship between the symbol and meaning is obvious like a lion meaning strength, while some are less obvious and you have to understand the meaning of the object before hand, such as a sword meaning truth.

- Key concepts: simile, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony, lies, impossibility, depiction, and representation- all of these concepts can help us produce new insights into the meanings of objects images and texts.

- Synecdoche- using a part of something to stand for the whole thing or the whole thing to stand for a part. This could be using a personal story about malnourishment to raise money for a charity instead of providing abstract statistics as a whole, or showing images of just elvis' hair, and people think of elvis as a whole from seeing that part.

- metonym: when one thing is substituted for another in a piece of communication

- Many signs have to be learned with the conventions of the language in which they are embedded before they can be used

book jacket examples: successful & unsuccessful.

I like the juxtaposition in the title and how it is played with in a visual way with the lampshade being slightly crooked, but I don't think the type also needed to be slightly off as they have done with the "F". I think just the visual aspect with neat text would have looked cleaner and better displayed the juxtaposition of the title.

I like how the subject matter was approached in this cover design. Though it is about love, it is a more scientific approach, and therefore does not require a fanciful, lovey-dovey cover. The color red is associated with love and passion, and one chair leaning, almost gravitating, toward the other reminds us of the connection felt when in love. This cover also takes a more modern and artistic approach which is visually appealing and clean.

Typographic and visual elements are balanced very successfully in this design, and the cigarettes forming the United States tells the reader what the book will be about in a creative way. The fact that the subtext is in a cigarette package label is a nice solution as to where to place more text in a way in that it belongs.

Though this is an extremely creative concept, and conveys to the reader what the main contour of the novel is at a glance, I feel as though it is too busy for a cover. It may be eye-catching on a shelf, but it can be difficult to read the specific details of the title and author's name in a quick second. Overall, the design is too bold for a cover and the various markings and colors as well as type mixed with script gets quite confusing for the eye.

books: re-designed, research

1) The Every Boy
2) Dana Adam Shapiro: Dana Adam Shapiro was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for his first film, MURDERBALL, a documentary about the United States Paralympic Quad Rugby Team. His latest film, MONOGAMY, starring Chris Messina and Rashida Jones, is nominated for a 2011 Independent Spirit Award and will be released theatrically by Oscilloscope Laboratories. His 2007 animated short about unrequited love and recycling, MY BIODEGRADABLE HEART, was an official selection at Sundance and many other fests around the world. His debut novel, THE EVERY BOY (published by Houghton Mifflin), was a NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE and a 2005 BOOK SENSE NOTABLE BOOK. Other projects include HOLLER, a film about segregated proms in the South, which he wrote and will be produced by Screen Gems in 2011, and AMERICAN FAMILY, a documentary-in-progress about interracial couples. Shapiro is a former senior editor at SPIN, a founding editor and senior writer of ICON magazine, and he is a contributor to THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE and other publications. He was the 2007 Artist-in-Residence at Bucknell University and currently lives in Venice, California.3) Bare Henry
4) Henry Every, the titular boy in Shapiro's inventive but too precious debut novel, drowns under mysterious circumstances at the tender age of 15, leaving behind a mother who's a little obsessed with ant farms, a father devoted to his jellyfish and boxing, and five years' worth of diary entries written on 2,600 pages of loose-leaf graph paper. This "ledger... is... a catalog of life's wee tics and pangs... threadbare confessionals, overheard dialogue transcriptions, [and] stabs at investigative journalism." For his estranged parents, Hannah and Harlan, it's a window on the wacky inner life of a deeply (but quite happily) odd teenager. Henry's antics and observations are endearingly offbeat for the most part, but become cloying at times: in answer to the essay question "Who are you?" he "found himself starting at the Precambrian era and sifting through four and a half billion years worth of being." Though Shapiro serves up some wise, lovely characterizations (Henry's grandma Lulu, for example), the mostly light-and-sweet narrative stalls in moments of self-conscious precocity, when the author's fascination with Henry resembles a narcissistic adolescent crush.5) dark, comical, obscure, inventive, coming-of-age, observant, odd, tragic, youth, happy, encouraging, sweet
6) Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.
7) Henry tries to find himself amidst his odd and estranged parents.
8) There is not a clear antagonist, though it could be considered "the world" that does not include Henry.
9) Henry Every: "Telling the truth is so much easier. Every lie requires a lifetime of maintenance."
10) I chose this book because I feel as though the covers that had already been designed did not fully express the depth and challenges of the Henry Every.

*1) Candy
2) Kevin Brooks: It was the publication of Martyn Pig that changed everything. After being turned down by a number of publishers, Kevin Brooks sent his manuscript to The Chicken House, who jumped on the chance to publish it. They released Martyn Pig in the spring of 2002. In the U.K, the book went on to be short-listed for the Carnegie Medal and win a Branford Boase Award for a first best novel. And in the United States, it was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start and an ALA Book of the Year, among its many accolades.
3) Lucas, Being, iBoy, Kissing the Rain, Martyn Pig
4) The story opens when Joe- from a single parent family, a music lover and with a knack for curiosity - meets 16-year-old Candy on the streets of London. He soon learns that Candy is not only a runaway from her home town, but also a teenage prostitute and heroin addict. He immediately becomes infatuated with her.
5) naive, complex, fast, teenage, lovey, fantastical, curious, haphazard, accidental, heartbreaking, critical, urban
6) Sometimes doing everything for love can backfire.
7) Joe does everything to get a solid hold on Candy's heart after meeting her by accident.
8) Candy drags Joe into complex and dangerous situations, by accident or on purpose.
9) Joe: "I was always doing that back then - making up songs, playing tunes in my head, dreaming the music..."
10) I chose to redesign this book's cover because I feel as though the image and typography do not work well together, nor does it fully describe the story.

1) The Lovely Bones
2) Alice Sebold: Alice Sebold was born September 6, 1963, in Madison, Wisconsin, to an alcoholic, demented mother and a Spanish professor. While attending Syracuse University, she was brutally raped. She eventually took her rapist to court where he was convicted on six counts. She published her first book, Lucky as a “misery memoir,” and then The Lovely Bones, an award winning fiction novel that led to her success. She lives today in San Francisco, California, with her husband Glen David Gold. The Lovely Bones has been adapted to film and is scheduled for a 2009 theatrical release. Her most recent novel is Almost Noon.
3) Lucky, The Almost Moon
4) On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.
5) depressing, omniscient, uplifting, mysterious, absence, heavenly, bright, dreamy, puzzling, life-like, interesting, whimsical
6) Justice is served when the innocent are mistreated.
7) Susie helps the people she loves find her killer as she watches over them in heaven.
8) Mr. Harvey tries to escape his crime and avoid being arrested for the murder of Susie Salmon.
9) Susie: "In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair."
10) I chose to re-design this book because all of the covers are the same, and though they are not badly designed, I think I could come up with a different solution.