Kookaburras

Here's the vector shapes I created from an "Australian icon". (It was a kookaburra).

The original picture.

Working with the shapes.

Food Brand Logo - Kraft

This is the first logo analysis for GD this year.

Although not exactly an Australian owned company, I still thought I should take a look at the Kraft logo, due to the fact that they produces a brown yeast paste which has somehow become an Australian icon.

Kraft is a company that has been around for about 80 years. It was started in 1909 by James L. Kraft along with his brothers. Its main Australian connection began in 1930, when it merged with an Australian Dairy company.

This "classic" Kraft logo is very solid looking. It has a stamp like quality, due to its thick border surrounding the name. The sans-serif font spelling out KRAFT is also very thick and solid, making it feel grounded.

The red colour stands out, so you notice it first, which then lets you focus on the words in the middle. It's also worth noting that Kraft packaging is quite often a yellow or light blue colour, which also adds to the companies product identity.

All up this logo is not particularly inspiring. However, as long as product is reasonably well received by its consumers, the logo is simple enough to be easily recalled when seen else where.

This seems to be the case with a lot of older company logos that go unchanged over the years. It's likely that a type of "natural selection" goes on with these brands, and the ones that stick around on the shelves will also get their logos more ingrained in the public's mind (especially if they've been around for 3 generations, like Kraft).


The logo itself may be good or bad, but the longer the product is around, the more familiar it becomes to the customer, and therefore the individual merits of the logo may as well be disregarded. The only merit that does matter at this point is that it is unique. A logo with similar design elements could possibly confuse the customer into thinking unrelated products are related, and dilute the impact of your individual logo (hence - McDonald's trade marketing their red and yellow colour scheme, or Cadbury with purple). I think it's important to point out this relationship as familiarity is the main strength of this Kraft logo. It most likely wouldn't work if Kraft hadn't established itself 80 years ago.


I think my main point is, that, as a new product on the shelf, you are going to be competing with well known brands. The strength of your logo is irrelevant to those customers who want familiarity in what they buy. It would not take much to design something better than this Kraft logo, but that's not going to help you when this logo is already so well established. The best you can hope is that your logo looks classy or "quality for money" enough so that those customers that break from convention will go to your product first.

However....

As soon as a product attempts a significant redesign, they lose a good deal of that instantaneous brand recognition. It takes a couple of seconds for the customer to actually look and read "kraft" and realise it's the brand they know and love. These seconds may result in them walking past this box of sugar-covered-wheat-flakes and instead see the box of sugar-covered-wheat-flakes with your logo. So, anyway - let's look at this logo:


This logo obviously was supposed to be more "fun" and appealing than the original logo. The curved lines of both the text and shapes are softer than the hard KRAFT punch you get from the first logo. Although the blue writing is technically the same colour in both, it is much softer and and natural feeling because of the flowery colours around them. All up, I think this logo is meant to give a cool, natural, flowery appeal. I'm guessing Kraft wants to be on the eco-happy band wagon.



img src: Kraft

Blog Set-Up

I've set up this blog for Graphic Design 2.1. I'd originally set up this "2 Happy Rabbits" blog for displaying other projects, but seeing as I hadn't posted anything so far, I may as well start it off with GD.

I did a pretty basic html/css edit for the layout, with my images uploaded from flickr. There may be a better way to set up a custom blog, but I'm not sure if Blogger lets you store images on their servers (for free at least). At least you get access to the html for free.

It's a bit annoying that flickr doesn't seem to be able to hold 24bit png images, so I can only use 8 bit alpha channels; that's why the gradients on the header and footer are granulated. Oh well - I can always alter the layout later (if I can be bothered). At least I've worked out the basic div template that Blogger uses, so it should be easy enough.

Anyway - no one probably cares about any of this, so I'll just get on with posting.