How about less talk, more drawing action from now on? Day one of online sketchbook. It says December—as in supposedly it’ll be colored by December. Inspired by what used to be my caviar-eating Discus, Homer and Marge. They just played paper rock scissors and tried to make babies all day.

Conducive Consulting, an IT consulting firm in Austin, has just hired me to create their logo and website. Here are my initial sketches for the logo.

Now I have to bring up Logo 3D-ization. Many designers are dissapointed by this phenomenon, or fad, but it has stuck around for a few years since being adopted by so many Fortune 500 companies. I am referring to the “revamping” of classic logos originally from the likes of Paul Rand and Saul Bass, in favor of drop shadows and gradients. Some examples would be UPS, AT&T, Apple, BMW, and Volkswagon, but there are plenty more. I have to visualise the board meetings of doom such as the one where someone says “make it pop.”

My opinion is that it is a shame to redesign a recognizable cultural icon without a real reason for change. On the other hand, original logos that are 3D don’t bother me so much as long as the graphic, one or two color logo doesn’t become a lost art. Sure, I am guilty of creating some semi-3D-esque logos, but these still maintain simplicity of design.

The topic of PNG or Portable Network Graphics, pronounced “ping,” has come up a few times lately, designers are afraid to use them because we’re clinging to GIFs like a beat up old teddybear from our childhood. Turns out, PNG compresses to a smaller size when compared to a GIF with same number of indexed colors, in addition to supporting varying alpha levels (degrees of transparency). According to fellow designerd Micah Nolte, they don’t quite render the same across all of the browsers. This is contrary to what I’ve read, but perhaps that’s all just a big conspiracy to rid the world of animated GIF abuse. To be continued…