@mikaelf: Brief: Logo for my iPhone App called “Chawkle” with the base color #A51F26. Inspired by Kevin Mitnick in the film Takedown (2000)

I tried to google Chawkle but without luck so I guess it’s a work in progress. No professional designer can do a job that makes a difference without information or insight in what the product does or why people would want it. However it’s actually not that uncommon to get tech identity assignments for stuff you can’t get more information on, I call it a “place logo here”-job. The tech department have a space assigned for the logo and you are not allowed to change anything else. (I do try to avoid those types of jobs because it decor not design)

First I planned to do the work and screencast in Photoshop, but there is a lot of different opinions on what resolution and format that is best to avoid a blurry iPhone icon. Some dev-text said indicated that the iPhone added some part of the graphic, for instance a highlight on the top when browsing the app in iTunes Store. Too much conflicting info, so I decided to do two versions, one that would look good with automatically added highlights and shades, and one with the highlights already added. That’s why I changed top colors in the end, the red was just ugly with the automatic highlight. I used these iPhone icon templates for testing.

I also decided to deliver the job in a scalable illustrator format. Mikaelf can then save in different resolutions and formats for live testing in the dev environment for him self. If this was a real job I would have installed the dev-kit myself and done all the testing, but I just erased it last week since I needed the hard drive space.

The color was so specific in the brief that I felt that the influence of the hacker in Takedown was almost secondary. Chasing for a most wanted hacker gave me some network map and target board ideas, but since it’s a place-logo-here-job I didn’t want to be to literal. Design time under two hours.

Download the Chawkle logotype »

I like to do some more iPhone or perhaps Android app icons, so please tweet in briefs for those. Hint what the app is good for is also something that makes a brief better
The music in today’s screencast is Memories – Gentle Touch.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under logotypse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.