The last article I wrote about logo design was about logo trends from past years. But now, 2008 logo design is getting some cool trends already.

It's important to be at the center of all design trends, because most of clients want to be at the hype. And the hype for trends right now are pretty cool. Some have been out there for some time now, and others are somewhat new. Check it out.

Organic 3D

Waves - The New Swooshes

"Web 2.0" Logos

Transparency in logo design

"Underground" Typography - Minimal Fonts

New Rainbow / Color Scale

Sci-Fi Fonts

Leaves Logos

The "Ugly" 80's

The New Crest

Source: LogoOrange

Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com

Jung von Matt, a german design agency, has come up with a cool print campaign for the CinemaxX movie theaters.

Johan Kleinjan signs these cool illustrations, that somewhat remind us of "Beavis and Butt-head" and "King of the Hill", both from master Mike Judge. The campaign makes fun of absurd movie concepts, like "being friends with a orca", or even "not wearing underwear at an interrogation". Really funny!

Source: Brainstorm #9 (awesome blog)

Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com

BusinessWeek recently ran a piece titled How To Reenergize Starbucks, which addresses the return of Howard Schultz to help Starbucks reclaim its original spirit. The story solicited commentary for a stable of design+business folks, whose responses I found disappointing.

The folks at hipster coffeehouse Ritual Roasters dressed up as Starbucks Zombies for Halloween. Flickr link.

(The following is a combination of ideas/concepts from me and Brandon)

Starbucks is a company we think about at Adaptive Path, as it’s success was very much built on its experience design. We use Starbucks to explain the experience strategy tool of the Elevator Pitch:

For people who have 15 minutes to spend on themselves, Starbucks is a familiar social experience that brings comfort, reliability, and enjoyment to the everyday coffee-drinking routine.
Unlike other habits, rituals, and indulgences, Starbucks consistently delivers your day’s best break as a personal experience wherever or whenever you need it.

As such, unlike many in that BusinessWeek article, I don’t think it’s about The Coffee. Starbucks has to deliver a basically good product, but they don’t need to deliver a superlative product. And they definitely don’t need to sell $1 coffee — that sends exactly the wrong message, in that it moves Starbucks to the bottom of the pyramid, and turns them simply into a volume operation.

What they need to do is make the store experience inviting, not so much about pushing product, but about being that Third Place (not home or work) where people can get a respite.

“Welcome To The Third Place”, an image from a Starbucks in Australia. Flickr Link.

Starbucks needs to engage with The Long Wow. The need to assess their touchpoints for delivery — The retail environment (including music, smell, etc.), the staff and service protocol, the beverages/food, the packaging, the wifi, the streetscape (where and how it fits into the neighborhood), etc.

They need to reconsider their customers’ needs (which may have evolved since they first opened). What do you need at a third place other than a drink or a light snack? You might need a private place to chat (think bench in a park), a good place to read/study (think library), or a place for casual conversation (think bar). There’s still plenty of room in which to sell services or product, but it’s clearly not about feeling more like a shopping mall.

Approaches to consider:

+ Allow the stores more control over how they engage with their community. This is the Whole Foods model. Each Whole Foods store has a high degree of autonomy for fitting within their community. Whole Foods has been able to grow, yet still achieve that “transformative” quality for their customers, and I think this is key.

Flickr Link

+ Take advantage of the fact of real estate. Apple Stores’ success hinges on recognizing that in a physical environment, you can have a remarkable set of high-touch interactions, with merchandise and other people, that can really elevate your experience. Apple uses their stores physical-ness for classes, genius bar, lengthy trials of the products, and, to a certain degree, a cool place to hang out. Starbucks could benefit from such a mindset, with things such as book clubs and other affinity groups. Starbucks could reach out to its community and serve as a hub/meeting place for such things.

+ Let employees and service designers play with the service protocol; today, you order a coffee and pick it up a few seconds later. Nothing special or unusual ever happens during the service. Employees don’t have the means to delight or surprise a customer, or just make a customer smile. Their “cheer-chain” was a poorly handled PR stunt, but it illustrates that delightful variations in service make for a good break. It just has to be genuine, which means from the initiative of staff and not from the corporate playbook.

To finish, It would be marvelous to see Starbucks manage and operate based on experiences. They should own:

• the morning stop on the way to work
• the private chat
• the study cram session
• killing time before your meeting/date/etc.
• and keep identifying more while re-inventing the ones that have grown tired

And each store should know which of these experiences they support, and identify which customers are looking for which experience and support them in it.

Share This

This is a sponsored review, if you want to have your product or service reviewed by our team send an email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com.

Nowadays is very important to have a blog or even a website, we can promote our portfolio, ideas and opinions. And if you are a freelancer it's one of the best ways for you to get some work.

However building a website is not an easy task. It requires a good knowledge of designing with grids, colors and typography. Also, there's the programming part: CSS, XHTML. besides that, you will need a good amount of time to do design and get your site runing, and that might be a problem when you have a lot of things to do.

That's why sometimes it's worth buying a web template. You can get a website for a very affordable price and even a hosting plan. Buytemplates.net is a good example, they offer you pretty much everything you will need to have your site:

Template Features

• Five page templates (homepage and five internal pages)
• Affordable at only $29
• Template membership package giving access to 1000's of templates at a one time pay
• Flash and Joomla templates
• Great for web designers
• Live chat support 24 hours

Other services that they offer

• Complete customization of template (design customization and content insertion)
• Custom web design service
• Adding functionalities for ecommerce site (Adding forms, Adding databases, adding shopping carts etc.)
• Hosting

For more information visit their website at Buytemplates.net.

Gabe Ibañez has directed this beautiful ad for… actually, I’m not going to spoil it. (via Coudal)

My passion for illustration just keeps getting bigger every time I run into some cool portfolio, or when I'm surfing on DeaviantArt. I mean, you gotta love these.

Linework, sweet shapes and colors, awesome ink texture, sense of depth, dimension, lighting, shading... man, I just wish I could draw stuff like these.

This dude is good. Really good.
Source links: #1, #2.

Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com