Archive for the ‘Graphic Design’ Category

While society tends to become more complicated, brands seem to become simpler. Whether this is because of changes in taste, or the increasing pace of life, which makes fast identification essential, it seems that design and corporate professionals increasingly recognise that simplicity is a virtue, and that sometimes less is more.

If a brands’ conception has elements that hinder communication overtime without adding anything useful, these elements will eventually be removed for simplicity.

The link below has examples of some of the worlds most recognised brands, showing their design journey from birth. You may even be surprised by the changes over the years.

http://best-ad.blogspot.com/2008/08/evolution-of-logos.html

Masters Allen have recently been given the opportunity to produce album artwork for talented musician Jamie Kane.

We were very excited to work along side Jamie, after all album covers are a great area to stretch those creative legs! Think Factory records, Joy Division, New Order, Peter Saville etc.

The album entitled ‘On Bended Knees’ was recorded in the winter of 2007 and has proved to be very personal to Jamie. This is due to the fact that for the first time Jamie produced and played everything on the album with a little help from pedal steel players and gospel singers. This provided an excellent starting point for us to throw around some ideas.

Working from Jamie’s inspiration for the album, namely religion and it’s negative connotations we explored many different avenues. The final artwork was reached through a mixture of the original inspiration and the birth of Jamie’s second son.

Jamie has uploaded the tracks onto his myspace page; www.myspace.com/jamiekane
The page also contains further details of Jamie’s influences and other projects, so take a look.

We recently stumbled across a great site showcasing some of the fantastic work from the legendary Saul Bass.

Bass made the movie title sequence into an artform, collaborating with great movie makers such as Hitchcock, Preminger and Scorsese.

The interactive image galleries in particular caught our eye, each one reminding us how iconic these titles have become.

www.notcoming.com/saulbass/index2.php

The summer is officially here and festival season is in full swing!

Masters Allen didn’t want to miss out, so we headed for the sunny (well almost sunny) fields of Oxfordshire for ‘Wakestock’ the UK national wakeboarding festival. For those of you who don’t know what wake boarding is, then it’s simply waterskiing but with a board. The interesting bit is being able to do jumps and tricks off the wake of the motor boat. We found it good fun to watch, mixing that with some great music and camping and you have Wakestock.

Whilst we were partaking in the fun, we became interested in the festival’s main sponsor logo – “Relentless energy drink”. It’s a brand we have not come across before and were intrigued to see this brand promoting itself so heavily within this extreme sports festival. We were so intrigued, that when we got back from our weekend, we investigated further. It turns out that Relentless has spent the last couple of years targeting extreme sports events, creating a brand that has now become part of the extreme sports tours and festivals landscape. Sports such as, wakeboarding, motor cross, mountain biking, skateboarding and surfing. The product sits well within this market, building on the adrenalin rush atmosphere. We were impressed by the way this brand has concentrated its creative approach to target a specific audience and not gone for a safer, more general route. Even the logo design has a flamboyant, energetic, almost tribal tattooed look and feel, again directly targeting their desired audience. With the extreme sports attracting large crowds to these events, it seems that relentless have tapped into a seriously exclusive yet financially lucrative market, that is still growing.

As far as the product goes, we weren’t too impressed, unable to finish a single can due to the ‘extreme’ taste. But then if your marketing is so strong, does it really matter if it’s not to everyone’s taste?

Welcome to the Masters Allen news and views pages. Over the coming months this will become a resource of useful hints and tips on all things design, marketing and internet related, covering new technologies to fascinating design ideas.