wow
looks like ebay changed It's logo
amazing
its not often companies are this bold
Old:
New:
They say it 'reflects a dynamic future' whatever the fuck that means
-_-
it feels so boutique now
creative use of color again also, reminds me of past masters in logo design:
And MSFTS 'new' logo, inspired:
It's like a terribly boring conspiracy, the year of the ANTI logo
I still love how deftly MSFT joined the f and the t, it really changes it from just a bunch of letters taken directly from a boring font, and turns it into a work of art, week labouring over the exact shade of grey to infuse the type with.
At least google has a good excuse for having a shit logo, it was free
-
Lol looks like I'm not alone in making this granted rather obvious connection:
*starts to hyperventilate* *breaks glass and takes an emergency look at the one true logo, one to rule them all*
Yah I'm a fan boi, what evs
Here are some other logo's getter better:
And best logo ever:
What did you see, I saw a temple in front of a big red sun....
This is a Logo I recently designed for my new company... which will just be me.. for now
:-)
And of course by company I mean I thought up a name and made a logo nothing official yet
And of course by company I mean I thought up a name and made a logo nothing official yetI have been tossing around various concepts for games for ages now, along with learning real programming languages for the first time unless you count Flash AS3 which is close really.
I didn't mean to design a logo before I even have a game or even a wireframe of a game, but one thing lead to another and out it popped one day.
I guess I have just been so utterly bored of writing code (AS3 with this Topps Tiles job) and studying the manuals of Unity 3D and C Sharp without having produced anything tangible or visual in forever.
I am swinging between incredibly apprehensive and eager to start making games by myself. I just know It's going to turn out to be way more difficult and wrought with disaster that I expect, and I already expect it to be the toughest thing I have ever done. I think I have a relatively unique edge over most people though, it been a long time coming; things have guided me down this path for my whole life I feel, it is my destiny!
I would really love to work with a small team of people instead of it just being me, but to start off it really has to be just me. If it works out, if at some point I prove I have got the taste, the broad skills to pull it off even on a small scale.. then I can start thinking about investing in people to work with.
Right now It's early days, a delicate and fragile thought that could poof out of existence unless carefully nurtured and then fiercely executed.
I have learned a tremendous amount of skills especially over past few years that go nicely towards this, sadly not much in the way of physical evidence to show for it, but It's in my head all right.
If I can just nail execution, and work hard, I can do it
And if I can just stop thinking about how incredibly over saturated the market is and how I could just as easily make $100,000 as I could drift off in the wind and make nothing...
:-|
And that's even if I can pull my shit together and execute 50 hour work weeks for 6 months and not implode, creating your own deadlines and sticking to them is tricky stuff. Creating your own inertia with no guarantee of payoff.
Ok heres the various historical progress / messing about:
Link: helios.mine.nu --- Y2011-Mo11-RoundTree
So here it is My new Logo / Brand for producing software and games under.. that is if I ever get anything finished -_-
This has taken a disproportionate amount of time for how important it really is. But it mattered to me personally to get right.
On iPhone and iPad:
This is what 100's of hours of logo design and pondering possible names looks like condensed. Which scarily doesn't look like that much work, but naturally I am only taking screenshots when I remember to, shame I don't have a time lapse of this
:-)
It's not that I'm so smart, It's just that I stay with problems longer -- Einstein
The original round logo on fire used on my personal Portfolio / Gallery was started in Jan 2006
And the reworking was done November 2011 which produced 'Roundtree'
Though it bugged my how it sounded like a famous brand Rowntree so I restyled it to the Lonetree name around July 2013 which served me internally for a year and shows up in the work in progress for my game.
To then start redoing the name again in June 2014 as I was finally buying the domain and hosting and just didn't 'feel it'
So Below is the various historical progress / messing aboutness's
Funny I basically had the logo after about 2 minutes but took me several hours to turn it into a tree as negative space. But that's what art is, when to keep messing with something and when to stop
I have always loved the old Bungie Marathon Logo ( which supposedly represents the hollowed out moon of Mars; Deimos that forms the U.E.S.C. spaceship Marathon
This all started with me doodling over the top of my current Logo and distorting it as I just wanted to tweak it a bit, not redesign it
I am not including all the work in progress for this starting point logo, it is included in this blog inside Y2006-Mo01-Website article titled 'My Website'
And then somehow right away drew a circle, and cut a piece of it
So that was it, remove the other circle, and I had redesigned my logo in 5 minutes!!
Except I kept going because I hadn't seen the symbolism and pure minimalism in that logo.
So over the course of several hundred hours I kept inventing
A very cryptic version of Alex Lovett as an X and L, my cleverness knows no bounds, bounds such as being able to even read it.
And I'm always googling to see if other people have heavily copied an idea of mine before I use it
:-P
Link is a cool word, double also cool. Also. I probably should have just stopped here
Ahh had, I see for the first time, it looks a bit like a very neat tree. And I do very much like the name, though it lacks character being just a purely descriptive name. And I may have stopped here and revelled in my cleverness but both com and co.uk domains for it are not available. Though I could have had RoundtreeStudios.co.uk. But more concerning than all of that is the very famous Rowntree fruit pastel company that we have here in the UK. And I can't escape how annoyingly close that is... so on I continue
I finally give in and try to think of some other names that are not so close to Rowntree.
Lonetree is pretty good and has more character, and symbolic of how alone I am, a lone develop, the solitary tree that grows, if at all, grows strongest and all that. But it still bugs me how it sounds like 'loan tree' and that it sounds a bit sad and pathetic being 'lone' as cool as 'lone ranger'
And lone tree stuck for a long long time. But ever time it came to buying the domain. I'd flinch, It doesn't feel right. Mostly because of the 'loan' sounding part. I want a name I can say in conversation and not feel stupid or have to spell it out.
code core sounds cool, but is a bit cold and nerdy... which is how I have become lately but doesn't mean I want that reflected in my logo
Yes for a brief moment I feel in love with code root. Finding the WWW really annoying as the smaller newer UK suffix looks out of balance, I tried a few hundred permutations on joint W's and V's together in vein.
Back to the drawing board.. again
Oooh, Ghostree, I like that. it has character, for boding ness.
So close to buying this one, getting fed up... but I still find it a bit embarrassing to say out loud. And I keep reading it over and over and it has become gost-ree to me. The sharing of the T while amazingly clever is a bit of a bastard portmanteau really. Ghost and tree are not very smooth sounding words.
Wood is better, wood is a good solid sounding, smooth sounding word that goes great on the end of other words.
Hmmm... Make it more minimalist, by removing the eye and the hands, improves it I think
.jpg)
Yes I am taking the piss, gotta love the double meaning, it has been a long day
Ok ok, I got it... I really got it
Shadowood
Sounds bad ass, rolls off the tongue, letters look good apart from 'W' stupid letter. Is actually representative of what the logo is. And is available in .co.uk domain
:-P
But yes it is a lot less 'original' and has some million search results on google compared to 10,000 for Ghostree
Nailed it, Shake six, I'm out here
Well lets play with some colours now
:-P
For amusement here is my scratch pad of namingness, I went at this for 100's of hours, it is ridiculous. Serendipity takes hard work. Then it looks clever ( till you know what went on behind the scenes )
Tools
Link: www.litscape.com --- 4_letter_t_end_words
Link: forum.chaos-project.com
Link: www.werdmerge.com
Link: www.degraeve.com --- invent-a-word
Link: alienname.com
Concepts
Misspell word
Compound words ( 2 words added )
Gumtree
portmanteau ( combine two works by joining sounds )
Mixel
Stormtronics
Enterbrain
Microsoft
Use clever domain extensions
Art.sy
Lonetr.ee
Oxymorons
Ice on Fire
Old Babies
Backwards ( last resort )
Azzip -> PIZZA
Something vidid and stupid or unexpected
BlueBananaa
BigAssTree
Mediocre Games
AngryBee Games
Random
Porcelain Chicken
Chinese Fried Tofu
Common Name Structures
Here is a list of common company name structures I got from gamedevmap.com, where X is the unique part of your company name
Entertainment (Retard Entertainment)
Interactive (Your Face Interactive)
Studios/Studio (Amazing Studios)
Software/Soft (Very Soft)
Labs/Lab (Evil Minion Labs)
Company/Co/Corp (Shinra Co.)
Media (1337 Media)
Games/Game Development/Development (My Frog Died Yesterday Games)
Online (I Go Online)
Design (Curly Brackets Design)
Systems (Asterisk Systems)
Technology/Tech (Synsys Tech)
Productions
lonetree -- endings
studios @today
software
games
industries
-soft
labs @today
lab
workshop
interactive
Foundry
Factory
Oven
Furnace
Machine
Station
Garage
logic
Domain
tree
outofyourtree
solitree
codetree
gametree
digitree
riotree
upAtree
untree
nonetree
nontree
squirreltree
losttree
Deadtree
digitree
swiftree
lightree
idiotree
ghostree @today
riftree
lostree
rootree
rocketree
modestree
dreamtree
NullTree
VoidTree
BanishedTree
BlankTree
Nihilitree
notree
LonelyTree
LoneTree
notree
FireTree
Hidden tree
lemontree
peartree
orangetree
cherrytree
blacktree @today
-
treetop
treeless
treelike
treeline
-
treality
trealize
arbre ( catalan )
arbre solitari
arbol ( spanish)
albero ( italian )
arbre ( French )
arbre soliatire
arvore ( Portuguese )
wood
woodland
heartwood
roundwood @today
deadwood
redwood
firewood
blankwood
voidwood
nullwood
gamewood
talkingtrees
Linkwood
Dramatic funny odd
Angry
Bright odd colors pinktree
Emotional states or character traits
Negatree
Loopytree
Treeloop
Loopywood
Woodloop
LoneTree
Codewood
oak
blackoak
oakvoid
angryoak
forest
gameforest
roundforest
seed
Seedling
Sapling
green
evergreen
forevergreen
whatevergreen
nevergreen
n'evergreen
clevergreen
deciduous
shrub
bush
root
bark
Ring
Loop
Link
Linkwood
Zero
Zone
Point
Code
Node
Core
Woodcore
Treecore @today
corewood
hollowcore
oakcore
seedcore
coreseed
codecore
root
rootcore
coderoot
treerootnode
treeroot.co.uk @today
coderoot.co.uk @today
drus
trunk
timber
garden
plant
Park
Field
Basin
Bed
Patch
Plot
Yard
Terrace
Oasis
Nursery
Yggdrasil
dryads
plantation
ecology
habitat
dendro
dendrology
Arbourous - formed from trres
arborary, arboreal, arborical
arboreal
arboreality
arboreus
arbor
Arbor vitae
Tree of life
Yuan
Code
Creation
Forge
--prefix
my
our
the
all
in
on
un
--sufix
ly
sy
er
it
ie
io
am
ia
ora
ero
ist
ism
ium
ble
ify
ous
ing
thru
ium
Ented
Arium
Electric
Red
Digital
Round
Singular
Dream
Epiphany
Chromatic Abberation
Solitary
solus, secretum, singularis
Secluded
Solo
One
Augmented
Mirage
Horizon
Circular
Fruits
Seed
Abstract
Creative
Illusory
Illusion
Elusive
Summer
Spring
Elusive Tree
Distorted Reality
Game Garden
Lone tree
Sole tree
Great company naming tells a story that engages and compels
Great company naming glides off the tongue and lands gracefully on the page
Great company naming stakes a claim that is distinctive and trademarkable
And great company naming must do all of this in just a few short syllables
Emotional Bonding Power - When naming a business or developing a product name, are you connecting with your target market? Are you measuring the name's emotional bonding power?
Memorability - Brand name research shows memorability is the true litmus test of exceptional names. Can your target market recall the new product name after seeing it just once?
Latent Association - What negative and positive associations exist with your new corporate name or product name? What barriers have to be overcome with negative latent associations? How does sound symbolism or phono-semantics (the meaning of sounds) affect the evaluation of a name's latent association?
Fit to Concept - Which brand name candidate best positions your company, product or service offering?
Pronouncability - Brand name research reveals what should be common sense: If your target market can't pronounce the brand name, they won't ask for it.
Can you quantify your product name pronouncability?
Sound Symbolism - Does the product name sound right to your target customers? If you're naming a business, does the name sound powerful and established?
Found some brilliant tools for simulating lens flares in AfterEffects, works surprisingly well, It's not physically accurate or anything like Maxwell render but It's can recreate a lot of the cool effects with added bonus of tons and tons of manual control.
It's called Optical Flares and is quite quite good
Sadly again this helps me little (not at all) in making actual textures or art for lumen, but is cool still.
It's called Optical Flares and is quite quite good
:-)
Link: www.videocopilot.net --- opticalflares
Sadly again this helps me little (not at all) in making actual textures or art for lumen, but is cool still.
Adobe Flash, Apple iPad and iPhone, Unity3D, HTML5, FXG, Chrome and Webkit 2... where is this all heading?
Flash is Dead
Ok, no not really, but It's wounded and bleeding and to no sudden surprise to me and many others.
Apple you see has very firmly put the last nail in the coffin for Adobe Flash on the iPhone and the iPad with recent announcements.
Steve Jobs was visibly gushing at the recent iPhone OS 4.0 event, demonstrating his vision for iAds, little animated interactive adverts that don't suck, all made in HTML5, throwing round numbers like BILLIONS and 'have you ever seen anything like this before!!... I havnt'
All at the same time slightly rubbing his genitals in the face of Flash, and rightly so.
This of course followed by the announcement that the new appstore policy would most certainly exclude all Adobe Flash powered apps. *gulp*
Link: www.apple.com --- specialevent0410
My Logo for HTML5
Link: apirocks.com --- html5
Apple have been and are increasingly persuading people to use HTML5 instead of Flash. This is partly because Apple/Steve Jobs hates Adobe for being such a sloth and are no doubt internally fuming that It's taken until Adobe CS5's release (coming out soon) for them to finally use the coding frameworks Apple have strongly been advised them to use since OSX was in very first development. And partly because they don't want anything like that kind of situation ever happening on their new light weight modern mobile operating system that is the iPhone/iPad OS.
Personal disgust aside, Looking purely at the technical reasons, multitasking, battery life and low level hardware features... it makes perfect sense and over time will hugely benefit consumers. Flash on the iPad/iphone is a bit of a shitty citizen and Apple demands higher standards, I suspect they don't much like the idea of the already crammed AppStore being Flooded with quickly ported buggy slow and battery draining shovel ware. This hurts some of the genuinely good apps but if the developer is genuinely good and the app is genuinely good then they would have no trouble justifying porting it properly and re-releasing it. Anything worth doing on the AppStore is worth doing right in Apples opinion.
The reason they didn't let Adobe know that they were going to uhm ban all their efforts is likely because:
A: Apple have always said and persuaded people to USE the proper development tools to make apps and doing anything else will result in your eventual demise.
B: Apple thought it would be bloody hilarious to kick Adobe in the teeth for all the shitty lagging they did back when the Mac was struggling for support and they just floundered about with lazy stop gap measure partial ports of Photoshop right up until the release of CS5.
'Creative types don't care about technical lingo, cross-compiling or the compatibility layers.'
Link: tekkie.flashbit.net --- creatives-should-remind-apple-they-exist
And It's because they don't care they are not aware of how damaging a 2nd class citizen like Flash could be to a mobile platform if it promotes lazy coding or ports opposed to the hard work that goes into making First CLass native applications. And First class is what is needed to facilitate things like multitasking without increasing power consumption.
For every Flash developer that isn't on the iPhone it makes room for native programs and the people who code those, and that is a good thing. Even if it means people have to go out and actually learn another language or invest more effort and energy into something. No ones complaining theres lack of choice on the AppStore, if anything it needs pruning.
--
SproutCore SquirrelFishes and more?
There are many interesting developments around JavaScript now that it it performs so well in modern browsers thanks to engines like GlassFish.. wait now SquirrelFish.. no wait they renamed again to Nitro
For people used to coding for Mac or native iPhone apps you can use frameworks like Objective-J or Cappuccino which allow you to use similar coding to produce nice JavaScript code.
And theres SproutCore
Link: www.sproutcore.com
Which is what Apple actually used to produce It's very polished web apps for MobileMe with a fully featured Mail client as one example.
It has tools coming to visually build 'rich' user interfaces using all kinds of elements you'd expect for building desktop applications, buttons, panels, sliders and so on.
Link: touch.sproutcore.com --- hedwig
And Apple looks to be enjoying a good deal of involvement with these products too given their vested interest, It's proposed iAds will start off as a creative service ran by them alone but it will release tools/frameworks/javascript code to the masses to roll their own. For example I believe the help documentation on the iPad is written with such unreleased libraries and runs entirely in HTML+JS, and presents a fluid panel based interface with the sliding and bouncing and basically all the feedback and physics you'd come to expect of a native iPad/iPhone app... but in the browser.
Object orientated programming in JavaScript indeed, oh how I love abstractions on top of abstractions on top of ....
Adobes: FXG - Open advancement/replacement of SVG for storing animation/vector graphics in a way that doesn't suck hard
Link: www.andersblog.com --- flash_on_the_be
It's not all doom and gloom for Adobe of course, they are implementing HTML5 tools and conversion from Flash/Illustrator via Dreamweaver. And it looks pretty good too using FXG the open format they designed. They tried to use open SVG for their purposes but SVG turns out to be ass backwards so they tweaked it and improved it and called it FXG.
This is great as lets face it, no creatives were looking forwarded to creating things like Apples new iAds and animating HTML5 using a graphing calculator and a spreadsheet.
Link: www.9to5mac.com --- Flash-html5-canvas-35409730
--
Adobes Flash Player was one of the more impressive things Adobe have developed (the AS3 runtime engine not the horrible IDE) and It's still pretty inefficient (the graphics part) especially fullscreen on a iPad like device with limited RAM and battery, the IDE's and Tools Adobe make to edit content are generally antiquated and bloated by todays standards too, regardless of how established they are and how monumental they may have been decades ago, Adobe appear to try and get away with as little effort and work as humanly possibly when it comes to Mac support, maximize profits and cut corners, they are slow moving and dogged down by too much baggage and legacy. And they will pay dearly for this as they have visibly pissed Steve Jobs off and rightly so. Saying that though, there are still strong forces for good inside Adobe trying to change things for the better, to open up formats like .FLA and generally promote freedom and choice and interoperability all things this creative professional likes greatly.
But they are moving perhaps too slowly, we shall have to see with CS5 if they have grown enough to stay relevant
It really is time to get on board with open standards and make money from creating GREAT content creation tools, not making mediocre minimally updated content creation tools that rely on locking people into popular but closed systems for distribution.
Link: www.google.co.uk --- chrome
With my new custom icon cus the default one is a gay. Really gay
Flash was a force for good when JS execution was awful and rendering HTML was guaranteed for failure in one browser or another. But that landscape has now changed drastically thanks to Apple with Safari/open WebKit and Mozzilas Firefox and now Google with open Chrome.
Link: webkit.org
And during a tough time like this what you don't need are official Adobe Evangelists spouting complete bollox and looking rather childish:
Apple Slaps Developers In The Face
Link: theflashblog.com
I had to wipe a tear of laughter from my eye to the recent addition of:
[Adobe would like me to make it clear that the opinions below are not the official views of the company and are entirely my own.]
Yah I bet they would, you raving lunatic
It's a fair first reaction to have, but as an Adobe representative and a grown Adult you're supposed to maintain the company message not confuse matters more with your own reactionary blabbering and name calling. Plus being in that position you'd think he'd actually be required to know anything about what he's talking about. I know more than him and Adobe don't pay me anything.
'let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment' = you just fired yourself, you can't do that and get paid at the same time (I presume he gets paid?)
This kind of oh mummy Apples bad to me crying does nothing to help me take Adobe seriously
It's a tough world, you have to innovate to compete, not recycle, fortunately I believe this is just the idiot few at Adobe (that should be removed) and Adobe as a whole are not collectively as stupid as It's few vocal bottom dwellers.
More laughter ensues: An additional claim that "Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5" has been redacted from Brimelow's blog entry at the request of Adobe.
Yah that basically concretes my initial conclusion that he is a massive tool. I wouldn't be surprised if the next redaction turns the site into a big blank page saying they are experiencing technical difficulties as he is forcibly dragged away screaming and sucking punctuating by him sucking his thumb.
"The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple's plans, is to support sophisticated new multitasking APIs in iPhone 4.0. The system will now be evaluating apps as they run in order to implement smart multitasking. It can't do this if apps are running within a runtime or are cross compiled with a foreign structure that doesn't behave identically to a native C/C++/Obj-C app."
"[The operating system] can't swap out resources, it can't pause some threads while allowing others to run, it can't selectively notify, etc. Apple needs full access to a properly-compiled app to do the pull off the tricks they are with this new OS," wrote one reader under the name Ktappe."
maybe he can find the guys from Adobe Dimension and Adobe Livemotion and form a support group -_-
Unity3D - a forward thinking 3D engine and toolset for creating games for Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, Wii (and PS3 soon I think)
Link: unity3d.com
I do hope none of this impacts Unity3D in a negative way, these guys seem to really 'get it' and produce good tools and good solid performing code.
They seem hopeful that it won't effect them. So fingers crossed for them.
--
Above: The mighty Apple has seen it all before
Some people have short memories
There are many that think Steve is some kind of control freak who wants the world to revolve around his finger, well, this is maybe partially true but It's also the no.1 reason why Apples products are so unusually interesting and fun and easy and joyous to use, Apple have had a long history of throwing out the old while everyone else is still getting used to it. It has allowed them to remain nimble and grow fast where everyone else is still talking about it and showing concept images.
It's the fundamental way they work, a driving principle behind their success, sure they don't make any friends doing so, and in the past this worked to their disadvantage on many occasion but these days, with Apples power and influence (market/mind share) it doesn't really matter, as Apple now sets standards all by itself. If Apple wasn't this way there would be no reason for them to exist as we already have plenty of mediocre reactionary companies to choose from.
I remember an old Apple Keynote, where Steve jobs revelated in the thought that when Apple and Microsoft join forces they are 100% of the market and anything they decided to do IS standard. This shortly preceding Bill Gates big goofy mug filling the presentation screen to a chorus of boo's as they helped bail out Apple for their own ends.
How things have changed since then, now Apple sets the standards by itself on It's own platform with a complete end to end solution and a freakishly dominate market share.
Apple got the chance to do what they dreamed of for the Mac with the iPhone, unhindered, unrestricted.
I applaud Apple for their vision, they were given the chance to do exactly what they wanted and they TOOK IT like they always have done, but this time without any worry of backwards compatibility or having to court and ass kiss slow moving software corporations to port software.
And now everyone is fighting to make software for Apple devices, and the consumer wins big time, and the creative artist and programmer wins big time too (the good forward thinking ones who don't cry baby that their investment in Flash is dwindling)
And I say all this as someone who has 1000's of hours investment in Flash... *gulp*
--
Now can we have the same revolution for the Mac Desktop?
Applications that resume where you left off and resume FAST no matter what computer or device your use, preferences and documents that go where you go.
A regulated organised application store for games and tools promoting modern code and good design.
Instant content/document search from a modern metadata file system like ZFS
A Finder capable of leveraging the modern filesystem with organising and displaying all kinds of media, documents, images, photos using modern concepts of stacks and tags and other logical groupings
Resolution independent GUI for high resolution LCD displays of the future, complete with modern GUI widgets and tools for creating powerful easy to use programs around standard components.
