Do Designers Think Alike?

Graphic Design Blog is conducting an experiment on whether designers think alike. It also aims to investigate whether designers are influenced by design trends and subliminal advertising. The idea here is to have designers design a logo and then hold a compare and contrast. Since I only read about this today, I did not have much time to think about the subject and, in fact, only had enough time to create a logo for one of the two 'companies' (Cheap 'n' Cheerful - a budget fancy dress shop, and Caffeine Rush - an espresso machine & accessory supplies shop) suggested. I chose to create a logo for the latter.

Thinking about a dress-up shop undoubtedly brings to mind notions of frivolity, of carefree days from early years - when life was about sleeping, pooping, pointing, refusing to eat and watching cartoons. Cartoons molded my world, and I always dreamt of becoming a superhero, and dressing and acting likewise. From there, cartoons seemed like a viable and, indeed, solid foundation from which to develop an identity around (even though costumes are certainly more varied than ones where you are required to wear underwear over leggings).

To be able to depict a cartoon character, or at least portray some of the characteristics of a typical cartoon character, I would first need to learn about character design. I have not the time at the moment, but I do realise emotions are displayed mostly through eye expression and hand gestures. Therefore, I started off with the eyes, created from the two C's in Cheap 'n' Cheerful. Placing circles within them allowed me to make eyes, or, depending on how you view it, a mask. Shifting the eyeballs around was a simple way to portray different emotions (this is most evident if you focus on each logo separately as opposed to viewing the collage):


Since hand gestures will cause the logo to bloat to an unreasonable size, it was only logical to develop the entire face. This was done by grouping the apostrophes to create a nose and positioning it at different angles and location to add facial features and enhance facial expression. The same goes for the mouth. I have only created logos with 'smiling arcs' rather than the wide range of shapes possible with the collection of alphabets (due to time constraints at the moment). The last step was to paint the logo with bright colours:


I have to say, although I am generally satisfied with the outcome, I do think that it lacks the clear and concise idea of 'cheap costumes'. There are a few options to highlight these based on my design which I can immediately think of, but this is merely a first stab. A more complete version will be left for a future posting.

Please do not hesitate to let me know what you think.

View Tara's logo here
View Paul's logo here
View Tess' logo here