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65 March Madness 2010 College Basketball Logos

March 15, 2010

The Madness is upon us! Yes, some of us up here in Canada like basketball (even though our only worthwhile export of late has been Steve Nash, and it’s hard to dribble in snow). I regularly tune in and throw away money when it comes to the annual 64 (now 65, with the play-in) team tournament; this year is no different. However, as I tuned in watch the selection show, a thought came to me: why not compile all the logos of the teams in the 2010 Tournament? I thought it would be interesting to have them all in one place, either for inspiration or to just to see similarities. So I did that, and here they are: all the logos from the 65 teams in this year’s March Madness tournament.

As to be expected, there is a LOT of collegiate fonts and initials. Here are some other random observations:

there is an overload of bears, dogs, and cougars
Minnesota’s “M” is horrendous
there is a definite, noticeable difference between older logo styling (Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, MSU) and newer logo styling (Oklahoma State, UTEP, Marquette).
the Arkansas-Pine Bluff logo (very first) is terrifying. Terrifyingly AWESOME
shame on Sam Houston for using Copperplate Gothic
my personal favorites: West Virginia, Texas, Old Dominion

So wraps up this fun post; hopefully, next time you get a logo design job for an academic institution, you remember to come back here for some inspiration! Enjoy the tourney, and I hope your brackets do well!

*logos courtesy of sportslogos.net.

Found Friday Vol 4

March 12, 2010

Happy Friday! Here to help you celebrate is a glorious mix of designy goodness from this week: the Happy Hour watch, a dynamic image generator for web mockups, a bundle of Mac software for mega-cheap, a half impossible/half easy online brand quiz, and a great article on properly selling your design services. Overall, a healthy mix of fun & practical. Read on & enjoy!

Happy Hour Watch

I figured this was the best item to start off with, since it’s Friday and I imagine a few of you readers are going to crack a cold one at 5pm like I am. This watch not only looks slick (and keeps time, presumably), but it has a bottle opener built into the latch on the strap. It’s like those Reef sandals of old, but for your wrist! (via uncrate)

Dynamic Dummy Image Generator

Designers are familiar with Lorem Ipsum (clients sometimes notsomuch, as ClientsFromHell can attest to) – it’s a great and quick way to put in placeholder text in your designs. But what about images? Along comes dummyimage.com, which is a super quick & easy dummy image generator for your web mockups. Pump in the size, pick a color for the background & text, pick a format, and get a link. That’s all you need!

Hit the jump for the rest of the Found Friday goodness! Read the whole article >

7 Ways to Make WordPress an Even Better CMS

March 8, 2010

WordPress is blowing up, as the kids say, these days. It’s no wonder; the open-source authoring platform is super-powerful, flexible and – most importantly – customizable. We use WordPress here at Paper Leaf to power our client sites, and we use it on our own blog of course. The more we use the platform, the more we learn about it. Just like anything, you pick up little tips and tricks to make the experience get better each time.

With that in mind, I’ve compiled 7 tools/plugins/tips we use on the regular when it comes to implementing WordPress as a content management system (CMS). If you have experience using WordPress and are looking for a few little tweaks to maximize your clients’ experience with it, look no further!

Custom Admin Branding

Let’s start at the beginning of your client’s user experience: the WordPress log-in screen. You can stick with the tried-and-tested WordPress-branded log-in and admin screens – but if your client is a small business or service, why not custom brand it for them? It looks slick, your clients will love it, it lets them know they’re in the right place, and it’s super easy to do with the Custom Admin Branding plugin.

This (stable) plugin has a very simple user interface to adjust colors and such; but the best part is that it comes with a PSD template so you can make sure your client’s logo won’t be cut off, etc. Follow the simple steps provided by the plugin author after you activate Custom Admin Branding, and you’ll have custom log-in and admin screens for your client in no time.

Adminimize

So your clients have logged in to through their custom-branded log-in page. Now they’re at their custom-branded Dashboard. While WordPress is well-known for its ease-of-use, it can still be a little intimidating for your not-so-tech-savvy clients. Plus, there are areas that are much better left untouched by the non-tech-savvy – areas like Appearance, Settings, Plugins, even Posts if there’s no Post functionality being used in the website. A very simple way to remove some/any/all of these features is by using the Adminimize plugin.

This (stable) plugin is really quite robust; a basic row/column system allows the administrator (you, preferably) to show/hide elements of the WordPress admin side. The best part: it’s role-specific. What I mean by this is that you can allow “Editors” to see one set of elements, “Authors” to see another, and so forth. This is great for small businesses who might have multiple people handling content on their website – they can be given a login and a role that only allows them to see – and thus edit – elements of the website that the administrator deems fit. Pretty slick for a plugin, I’d say.

Hit the jump for the rest of the post! Read the whole article >

Found Friday Vol 3

March 5, 2010

Welcome to Vol 3 of Found Fridays! This week’s finds include a great article summing up the basics of CSS3, a cool project involving t-shirts designed by bands for charity, a fun little chalkboard notebook, a website showcasing designer’s workspaces, and a brilliant article on what a brand is and what it isn’t. Read on!

BASICS OF CSS3

CSS3 has gotten a lot of coverage from a bunch of design blogs, and thus it’s been a little overwhelming just to figure out the basics and what we should know as a starting point. Luckily webdesignerwall.com came through with a timely & easy-to-digest article for all you web designers out there.

YELLOW BIRD PROJECT

This awesome Montreal-based nonprofit works with a variety of bands, asking them to design t-shirts with the proceeds going to a charity of their choice. Not only a cool idea, but some great tees in there too. Check it out!

Hit the jump for the rest of this week’s finds! Read the whole article >

Rebranding 3rd Street Beat Entertainment

March 3, 2010

Recently, Paper Leaf Design was offered the opportunity to rebrand 3rd Street Beat Entertainment – a group that offers hip-hop dance instruction, as well as show promotions and other related services. It’s always a nice break to get away from corporate design and be able to work with a company based in the arts, whatever branch of the arts that might be. New challenges present themselves, and it’s a good way to avoid getting into any sort of design rut, so we were all over it.

With art direction & project management from RY2 Design Inc., the challenge with this redesign was to make an identifiable & timeless logo for the overarching “parent company” of 3SB, as the gents behind 3SB also run Hip Hop for Hope, Santa’s Kids, Artists Emerge and more under this brand. We needed a logo that maintained a professional look-and-feel, but still spoke a bit to the nature of what 3SB does (without being too literal). The goal was to create something that balanced strength & confidence with movement.

The old logos made use of the easy-to-remember acronym 3SB. However, the design suffered a bit with the combination of a harsh radial gradient in the background, along with a dated 3D effect and questionable typeface choice (I would show them to you, but apparently we don’t have the rights to do so).

Here is the new logo, (art direction: RY2 Design, design: Paper Leaf):