Archives for category: Jessy Bou Dagher

This logo for Fashion Law institute works really well because it mixes the two disciplines of fashion and law creating a gavel from a needle and spool of thread.

Again with this concept for Green Canteen they have take the two ideas of canteen and green, mixing a fork with the stem of a plant.

Color Psychology in Logo Design

5 factors that affect our creativity!

65+ Great Examples Of Identity Design

30+ Creative Business Cards Designs (must see)

Yourbusinesscardsucks.com  A great website for the best and the worst business card designs.

Make Your Logo Work For You! Five Key Ingredients to an Effective Business Logo

The logo represents the wing of the Greek Goddess.The Nike logo is a classic case of a company gradually simplifying its corporate identity as its frame increases. The company’s first logo appeared in 1971, when the word “Nike,” the Greek goddess of victory, was printed in orange over the outline of a checkmark, the sign of a positive mark. Used as a motif on sports shoes since the 1970s, this checkmark is now so recognizable that the company name itself has became superfluous.

The solid corporate logo design check was registered as a trademark in 1995. The Nike logo design is an abstract wing, designed by Carolyn Davidson, was an appropriate and meaningful symbol for a company that marketed running shoes. The “JUST DO IT” slogan and logo design campaign communicated such a strong point of view to their target market that the meaning for the logo design symbol evolved into a battle cry and the way of life for an entire generation. Isn’t it amazing how a small symbol we call a logo design can make a company into a huge success.

The Newton Crest: 1976-1976

The first Apple logo was designed in 1976 by Ronald Wayne, sometimes referred to as the third co-founder of Apple. The logo depicts Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, an apple dangling precipitously above his head. The phrase on the outside border reads, “Newton… A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.”

The Rainbow Logo: 1976-1998

Not surprisingly, the above logo only lasted a year before Steve Jobs commissioned graphic designer Rob Janoff to come up with something, oh I don’t know, a little bit more modern. Janoff’s eventual design would go on to become one of the most iconic and recognizable corporate logos in history.According to Janoff, the “bite” in the Apple logo was originally implemented so that people would know that it represented an apple, and not a tomato. It also lent itself to a nerdy play on words (bite/byte), a fitting reference for a tech companyAs for the rainbow stripes of the logo, Steve Jobs is rumored to have insisted on using a colorful logo as a means to “humanize” the company. Janoff has said that there was no rhyme or reason behind the placement of the colors themselves, noting that he wanted to have green at the top “because that’s where the leaf was.”The multi-colored Apple logo was in use for 22 years before it was axed by Steve Jobs less than a year after his return to Apple in 1997. In its place was a new logo that did away with the colorful stripes and replaced it with a more modern monochromatic look that has taken on a variety of sizes and colors over the past few years. The overall shape of the logo, however, remains unchanged from its original inception 33 years ago.

The Monochrome Logo: 1998 – Present

TInkering with one of the most recognizable logos in the world wasn’t done simply because Steve Jobs is always looking to change things up. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was bleeding money, and Jobs and Co. realized that the Apple logo could be leveraged to their advantage. That meant experimenting with larger logos to make it more prominent.  If the shape of the Apple logo was universally recognizable, why not not put it where people could see it?That being the case, placing a large rainbow Apple logo on top of the original Bondi Blue iMac, for example, would have looked silly, childish, and out of place. Not exactly the direction Jobs wanted to lead Apple in.  So instead of placing a somewhat minuscule rainbow colored Apple logo on its products, Apple began placing sizeable and Monochrome styled logos on its products in all sorts of places:  on top of the original iMac, on the side of the Powermac G3 Tower, and in an assortment of colors on the good ole iBooks.  This trend, which began in 1998, continues to this day.The rainbow colored logo might always be a source of nostalgia for Mac enthusiasts, but the monochrome logo allows Apple greater flexibility when it comes to branding its products.  Also, Steve Jobs isn’t exactly the type to get wrapped up in warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia.  When Jobs returned to Apple, he needed to transform Apple’s image from that of a failing company into one capable of churning out sleek and cutting edge products, and he needed a new logo to match.  It doesn’t appear likely that Apple will change up its logo again anytime soon, but one thing that will undoubtedly remain is the shape of the logo itself.

 

History of Free Culture
Many have argued that the idea of open and free knowledge has been around since humans began communicating. Lawrence Lessig reports that one beginning of free culture occured in about 1774 when a British judge ruled to allow the works of Shakespeare to be free, free from the publishers whose business was selling books. (Lessig, 2002) The first North American copyright laws were based on British law that was introduced because of the introduction of the printing press in England in the fifteenth century. The initiative to copyright materials was not at the behest of authors but rather publishers. In the 1600s the British crown allowed a group of publishers known as the Company of Stationers a near monopoly on publishing in England. The company was given the right to censor and destroy books. Books that were published had to be approved by the Crown. Between that time and the early 1700s, the act lapsed and government censorship was relaxed.

In 2010, copyright law turned 300. In 1710, British Parliament enacted the Statute of Anne: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning that established the principles of authors’ ownership of copyright. The act allowed a fixed term of 14 years for protection of copyrighted works. If after 14 years the author was still alive, the period of copyright was extended for another 14 years. The statute created a “public domain” for literature by limiting terms of copyright. The statute provided the author copyright, but really was to the booksellers and publishers benefit because for authors to get paid they had to assign their work to publishers. Copies of books were to be placed in university libraries to benefit the public. The Act recognized the importance of spreading knowledge and allowing access to the general public. Today’s copyright law no longer focuses on spreading knowledge or open access.

The British idea of copyright was brought to America in the late 1700s. According to Lessig, copyright law at that time only covered printing not derivative work and creativity was unregulated. Over the years in North America, the terms have increased and been extended over 11 times. The Free Culture devotees call the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) the Mickey Mouse Extension Act because any time Mickey is about to become part of public domain, an extension to copyright passes. (Lessig, 2002) For more information on copyright see our page Copyright-Copyleft.

Lessig’s Free Culture Refrain

  • Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
  • The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
  • Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
  • Ours is less and less a free society.

The Modern Copyright Wars
For Lessig, the intention is not to undermine copyright but to provide alternative licenses that allow authors of works to determine the level of freedom attached to their works. As one of the founders of Creative Commons, his group set up a series of licenses that can work within copyright regulations. (See more on our page Creative Commons) In July 2010, the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) launched a fund-raising campaign to hire lobbyists to protect them against groups like Creative Commons, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier. In a July 10, 2010 response in the Huffington Post, Lessig replies to the group,

“Creative Commons is a nonprofit that provides copyright licenses pro bono to artists and creators so that they can offer their creative work with the freedom they intend it to carry. (Think not “All Rights Reserved” but “Some Rights Reserved.”) Using these licenses, a musician might allow his music to be used for noncommercial purposes (by kids making a video, for example, or for sharing among friends), so long as attribution to the artist is kept. Or an academic might permit her work to be shared for whatever purpose, again, so long as attribution is maintained. Or a collaborative project such as a wiki might guarantee that the collective work of the thousands who have built the wiki remains free for everyone forever. Hundreds of millions of digital objects — from music to video to photographs to architectural designs to scientific journals to teachers lesson plans to books and to blogs — have been licensed in this way, and by an extraordinarily diverse range of creators or rights holders — including Nine Inch Nails, Beastie Boys, Youssou N’Dour, Curt Smith, David Byrne, Radiohead, Jonathan Coulton, Kristin Hersh and Snoop Dog, as well as Wikipedia and the White House.
These licenses are, obviously, copyright licenses. They depend upon a firm and reliable system of copyright for them to work. Thus CC could have no interest in “undermining” the very system the licenses depend upon — copyright. Indeed, to the contrary, CC only aims to strengthen the objectives of copyright, by giving the creators a simpler way to exercise their rights.” (Lessig, ASCAP’s Attack) Lessig has asked ASCAP to address their differences in a debate.

From the above, one can see that the crux of the problem is who owns “what” and who determines how that “what” can be used. Proponents of free culture and open access seek to free that which they believe is important to progress and to foster creativity and innovation. Their view is that rather than becoming a more open society, more and more government controls and regulations have been implemented. These controls do not keep step with the new digital reality and they stifle creativity and education. According to Charles Leadbeater “This conflict between the rising surge of mass collaboration and attempts to retain top down control will be one of the defining battles of our time, from Communist China, to Microsoft’s battle with open source and the music industry’s desperate rearguard action against the web.” (2008) For more on the copyright debate see our Copyright/CopyLeft page and the debate between Lawrence Lessig and Jack Valenti.
Modern Origins of Free and Open
Many of the modern open and free movements stem from Richard Stallman and his 1984 Free Software Foundation (FSF). Stallman and his group created the GNU license to ensure that everyone would have more freedom to use, revise and build on software. According to Stallman, the FSF is more than a software movement, it is a social movement. Stallman’s GNU license is an example of a copyleft license. Where copyright restricts the use of materials, copyleft licenses free the use of materials at levels determined by the authors. Creative Commons licenses are also considered to be copyleft licenses.

A number of different movements have started that seek to free information, ideas and culture. Generally, they stress the importance of openness. As Nick Burbules says in Self-Educating Communities: Collaboration and Learning through the Internet, “Such communities also partake of a wider “open source” ethos which predominates on the non-commercialized sectors of the Internet: the assumption that ‘information wants to be free’ and that participation in a collective knowledge effort can bring satisfactions apart from explicit, personalized acknowledgment and credit.” (Burbules, 2006)

What is the Open Access Movement?

The beginnings of the open access movement in academia can be traced to decreased access to scholarly journals and articles caused by cost increases and declining or static library budgets. Librarians have played a part in the movement by alerting faculty and encouraging the formation of alliances like The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition which promotes open access to scholarship. The open access movement supports information sharing for the common good of all.

http://cost-of-free.wikispaces.com/History+of+Free+and+Open+Cultural+Movements

Open Access
by Peter Suber

Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

  • OA removes price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees) and permission barriers (most copyright and licensing restrictions). The PLoS shorthand definition —”free availability and unrestricted use”— succinctly captures both elements.
  • There is some flexibility about which permission barriers to remove. For example, some OA providers permit commercial re-use and some do not. Some permit derivative works and some do not. But all of the major public definitions of OA agree that merely removing price barriers, or limiting permissible uses to “fair use” (“fair dealing” in the UK), is not enough.
  • Here’s how the Budapest Open Access Initiative put it: “There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
  • Here’s how the Bethesda and Berlin statements put it: For a work to be OA, the copyright holder must consent in advance to let users “copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship….”
  • The Budapest (February 2002), Bethesda (June 2003), and Berlin (October 2003) definitions of “open access” are the most central and influential for the OA movement. Sometimes I refer to them collectively, or to their common ground, as the BBB definition.
  • When we need to refer unambiguously to sub-species of OA, we can borrow terminology from the kindred movement for free and open-source software. Gratis OA removes price barriers alone, andlibre OA removes price barriers and at least some permssion barriers as well. Gratis OA is free of charge, but not free of copyright of licensing restrictions. Users must either limit themselves to fair use or seek permission to exceed it. Libre OA is free of charge and expressly permits uses beyond fair use. Gratis OA is free as in beer. Libre OA is free as in beer and free as in speech.
  • In addition to removing access barriers, OA should be immediate, rather than delayed, and should apply to full texts, not just abstracts or summaries.

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm