What is a Logo and How Does It Brand a Business/Website?

You see them on flyers, letterhead, billboards and building signs. They appear in televised commercials, websites and other forms of advertising. Chances are that you cannot go a single day without seeing a substantial number of logos. What are logos and why are they such valuable branding tools?

What is a Logo?
By definition, a logo (or logotype) is a graphic symbol or image that is used to represent a company’s trademark and name. It is often designed to create a unique way of easily recognizing and identifying a specific company or website.

There are so many different types of logo designs that are used for companies and websites around the world. Some are more popular than others primarily because of the success of the company represented by the images. However, one should never assume that a logo is just a fancy image. As a branding tool, it has more power and presence than you might realize.

Quick to Recognize, Easy to Identify
One of the most prominent benefits of a quality logo as a branding tool is the beauty of quick recognition and easy identification. With so many different business and website names, it can become very overwhelming to distinguish between them – especially when familiar logos are not available. However, an effective logo design can make that task a lot easier – allowing people to recognize your logo and identify your brand almost immediately.

For example, when you see the letter “F” inside of a blue box, chances are that you will automatically think of Facebook. Whether you love their food or not, golden arches shaped as an “M” will remind you about McDonald’s. A white apple with a bite mark might quickly remind you about Apple. Detailed explanations and wordy phrases were not needed for you to identify those familiar brands; the logos took care of that, right? That is the beauty of logo design by Designhill. Quality logos make it a lot easier for brands to identify themselves and for clients to identify those brands.

The Power of a Brand’s Name
Another benefit of using a logo as a branding tool is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a symbol or image. There are many cases where the company or website wants to keep both the brand name and basically turn it into a logo of its own. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Quite a few logotype names have become just as iconic as symbolic logo images, according to Design Shack.

Apple might use an actual apple, but its biggest competitor – Microsoft – uses the actual word with a definitive logotype. Think about IBM, Coca-Cola, and FedEx ad UPS. The names (even as abbreviations) have basically become their logos and there is nothing wrong with that. Effective branding power extends far beyond images and words; it is more about the actual design itself.

Appreciating the Essence of Color
When examining logo design by Designhill, you likely have noticed the broad use of colors. That is because colors can highlight the essence of a brand’s logo, allowing its personality to emerge directly through the design. According to Mashable, each color brings its own implication and nuance to the message conveyed through the design.

For example, the color red conveys sexiness and energy while the color blue conveys tranquility and trustworthiness. Black is used in designs to convey credibility and power while white is used to showcase simplicity and cleanliness. Pink is used for flirty and fun messages while green conveys growth and instruction.

The Basics of Logo Design
Understanding what a logo is and why it is such a powerful branding tool is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to be able to fully understand the basics of effective logo design. According to Creative Bloq, applying several simple principles will take your logo design work to new heights.

For instance, view simplicity as a requirement – not an option. Simplicity makes it easy to recognize logos and keep them memorable yet versatile. The logo design needs to withstand the test of time, meaning that it needs to remain effective on a long-term basis. When thinking about the longevity of your logo, focus on decades – not days. As mentioned earlier, versatility is of the utmost importance so that brands can use logos in a variety of applications and mediums.

The Bottom Line
From the surface, it might seem like logos are nothing more than fancy pictures or memorable images. However, logo design by Designhill focuses on turning those “fancy pictures” into effective branding tools by truly appreciating their value. Once you fully understand the branding power of logos, you will take one step closer towards creating the next iconic image (or logotype) for your client. Without appreciating its long-term value, though, you will never be able to achieve that goal.

 courtesy:http://www.ourtuts.com/

Understand Responsive vs. Adaptive Web Design

Web design is evolving. Designers are ideating innovative design concepts to cut on the renderability issues, optimize load times and make sites search friendly.

Web design’s new ‘buzz words’ are concepts like responsive, scalable and adaptive layouts.

However, there has been a great debate between the responsive and adaptive layouts, so how should designers, and clients, differentiate these methods and apply them for a website template?

Let’s understand both the concepts in depth:

With the increased use of smart phones and tablets, the ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ isn’t necessarily the best practice any longer. When you view emails on mobile, you’re seeing a zoomed out view of the email, usually at 50%. This makes the text impossible to read as it’s half the size. This is where the concept of responsive design comes in. As the name explains, responsive web design responds to cross platforms such as tablets, desktops, mobiles and many more without being contorted. The biggest benefit of this type of web design concept is a quick call to action. Users will not have to constantly resize or zoom in and out of the page or even worse, try and tap a button the size of a pinhead. This results in better engagement, CTR, Response rate and Opens. Responsive designs are compatible with 70% of the major client emails.

So what is the difference with adaptive design? Adaptive web design is the practice of looking up information and coming to a consensus whether there is a need to apply CSS classes or not. An adaptive design uses the components of progressive enhancement to define design methods centering users over browsers.

Fluid Grids vs. Predefined Screen Sizes

Both responsive and adaptive web design projects have many similarities. They both ensure that the website is rendered in the correct format across devices and screens like mobile, desktop and tablets to create a seamless user experience.

However, responsive web design relies on flexible and fluid grids whereas adaptive design relies on predefined screen sizes. Adaptive web design is proactive and it ensures to detect a user’s device beforehand and then showing the best layout as per the screen. So what does this mean in plain English?

Client Side vs. Server Side

Technically, both are used for mobile optimization. Responsive design is more ‘client side’ which means that the entire page is given away to the device browser and then the browser makes it compatible to the screen. Adaptive on the other hand, is ‘server side’ which means that the server detects the device attributes even before the page is delivered. For the first one, the device itself does ‘all the work’ while for the later; the ‘work’ is done at server level.

With adaptive designs, incorporating additional features such as touch gestures and location is fairly straightforward. Adaptive web design uses three layers of progressive enhancement:

Content layer – Rich Semantic HTML Markup
Presentation layer – CSS and Styling
Client-side scripting layer – JavaScript or jQuery behaviors

To sum this up, responsive design and adaptive design have caused a lot of debate and confusion in the recent past. Designers need to have a clear understanding of both concepts. As far as the device user understanding goes, there is no major difference in both the concepts. To have the right web design solutions for your business, it is important to ask for an advised opinion from professional people who have a good understanding of both the concepts.

courtesy: http://www.ourtuts.com/

An Overview of the Animation Industry in India

Animation is regarded as an essential part of the creative industry, as creative or artistic effort is extensively required in the development process of animation. The animation industry in India today has emerged as the fastest growing section of the entertainment and media industry. This section has tremendous potential in creating jobs through the exploitation of intellectual property. The industry is preferred as an outsourced destination for animation work and has gained significance due to cheaper cost, skilled labour and English speaking manpower, are few among its several advantages. The animation companies and animation studios in India are partnering with international studios to develop animated projects for the audience all across the globe.

India, as Animation Hub

Today India’s being the biggest hub for outsourcing animation work, is expected to grow in domestic entertainment industry as well in coming days. The 2008 report on the entertainment and media industry by Ficci-PwC Entertainment and Media estimated the Indian animation industry at USD 0.31 billion in 2007, which is forecast to grow at CAGR of 24 percent and reach USD 0.94 billion by 2012.

The potential platforms for animation include online education and industry specific applications like medical, legal, insurance, architecture, etc. As a matter of fact, Indian studios do not cater to the needs of these areas but are opened with the opportunities in segments like TV programs and feature films with skills in 2D and 3D animation.

India is gradually transforming itself as a supreme provider of animation production services for following strengths and edge in the market:

•  Availibility of English speaking manpower.

• Presence of several well equipped animation studios.

• Low cost of animation services.

• Heritage of traditional literature.

• India’s vast entertainment sector.

• Indian Animation Market

Until the animation studios made its appearance in India in the second half of the 90s, the Indian animation market was more or less static. The development of more serious activity of the industry began in earnest on this front after the export-oriented outlook came into existence. The multiple players present in the Indian animation market providing it an identity and diverse characteristic.Some of these big players include Films Division Maya Entertainment, Pentamedia Graphics, Acropetal, Silvertoon Studio, Zee Institute of Creative Arts (ZICA), Crest Communications, Moving Pictures, Toonz Animation India, etc. The companies are situated mainly across cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram and Bangalore.

According to a recent NASSCOM study, the animation industry in India has begun taking shape where technical manpower, increasing demand from Indian television, establishment of more animation studios and training centres at domestic level and low cost animation production are included. The usage of animation has gradually increased in various end user segments such as advertisements/commercials, feature films, TV programs, and computer/omline games, where animation solutions have found a place in niches such as special effects, film titling, TV broadcast graphics, 3D modeling, Web entertainment programs and background development.

Outsourcing in The VFX Industry: VFX Studios in India Are At The Forefront

The words rapid and exponential do not even begin to do justice to the growth that the animation sector of India has seen in the recent years. During the beginning of this calendar year, it was estimated to be at 247 million US dollars and it was estimated to continue growing at 15 to 20% per annum. The big guys of the west like Walt Disney, Sony, and Warner Brothers have been sending out work on character animation and special effects our way and small business have been budding and sprouting in large numbers. Entrepreneurs in the animation industry say that though they are in theory clubbed with the IT industry, the work is 70% art and 30% technology and passion needed makes it possible for them to survive the competition. They haven’t just survived but they have thrived and are now bagging more and more noteworthy deals. As the outsourcing demands increase, more and more companies are joining the race from all around the country with Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad as the hubs. These companies have their own high-end studios and employ highly trained and skilled artists providing a full array of services. They also possess the ability to provide to a client’s customized requests.

Outsourcing as a pattern started with the IT industry. Slowly but steadily it has made its way into every other industry including that of VFX. But why India? What makes India the preferred choice for the west? The reasons are obvious. They are listed below.

Cost:

The fact of the matter is that it costs only about one fourth of the price to get a job done in India as compared to North America and only 35% compared to Korea and the Philippines. From the perspective of a business, you never skip an opportunity to save money unless it compromises quality.

Education and quality:
As the demand grows in the industry, more and more big advertising agencies and media schools are formulating courses focusing on quality training. And every year new talent pour into the job market, meeting the needs of skilled workers who can offer relatively better quality output.

Labour:

No job can be achieved without the labour to execute it. Having the second largest entertainment industry in the world gives India the scope to meet the labour requirements. And the constant improvement in the educational standards offers a bridge between the numbers and skill levels. After all, here the saying “what you see is what you get” is applicable in a very literal sense.

Communication:
With English being the primary language of communication in the profession environment across the country, outsourcing companies find it a lot easier to communicate their requirements.

Age of digital media

Digital media has changed the very way the world works. It presented the world an opportunity to interact continuously removing the age-old barriers of geography and reach. This contributed the growth spurt in the VFX industry. But the real change happened when Youtube became hit. The number of people searching, viewing, and interacting around video content has gone up tremendously. Youtube ready has the second largest number of search across the globe. Brands for a while now have leveraging this medium as a tool to reach out to its target audience. Because of this, the number of projects being made has also increased! It started out with the bigger brands and the IT companies that infiltrated the world markets and India. But has moved beyond that today but the concept of e-learning and other newer industries stepping in.

Because of these factors, outsourcing projects to India are only going to increase in numbers. The animation industry in India will only continue to grow and the VFX Studios in India will grow not just in number but also size and global presence!

Courtesy:ToolBox Studios

Adobe Makes Major Updates to Animate CC

Late last year, Adobe announced that it had renamed Flash Professional as Animate CC. Now, the software giant has launched an update which ranks as one of the tool’s biggest releases ever, tacking on more than a few new features.

The Animate February ‘16 release introduces direct integration with Creative Cloud Libraries, Adobe Stock and Typekit and additional features and enhancements, which include:

• Creative Cloud Libraries
• Adobe Stock integration for high-quality images, illustrations, and graphics
• TypeKit support for HTML5 Canvas document type
• New vector art brushes
• Improvements to pencil and art brushes
• Brush Library panel
• Tagged Swatches
• Custom templates for HTML5 Canvas documents
• OAM publishing support for AS3, WebGL, and HTML5 Canvas documents
• Publish text as outlines in HTML5 Canvas documents
• Projector support
• Stage scaling
• Rotate your stage
• Import SVG files
• Enhanced drawing object bounding box
• Video export to multiple resolutions
• Contents scale proportionately to stage size
• Enhanced Onion Skinning
• HTML5 Canvas improvements

Adobe has also issued updates for its no-code website design tool Muse CC.

First Image from New ‘DuckTales’ Revealed

As part of its March client presentations this month, Disney Television has unveiled the first image from the revamped DuckTales — an all-new animated comedy series based on the Emmy Award-winning series. Scrooge McDuck, his grandnephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, and Donald Duck will return to the small screen through Disney XD sometimes in 2017.

The art charmingly shows off the kind of madcap, comically cartoony adventures that fans of DuckTales have come to expect, with an airborne jeep attempting to avoid an unseen, spear-throwing menace, Uncle Scrooge at the wheel, and Donald on the roof. The designs are just familiar enough while presenting a fresh, graphic novel inspired style.

DuckTales is one of 17 new series that Disney Media Sales and Marketing is presenting in the kids’ upfront this year — in addition to 28 current series, 785 episodes, the Radio Disney Music Awards and two new original movies spanning Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD.