Madrid 2016 logo winner

At last, after so many controversy of plagiarism and interested members of the jury panel, the candidature of Madrid for the Olimpic Games 2016 has a winner, which is only an anecdote because it’s well know that after London 2012 the IOC wont choose another european city… the politicians have to justify expenses.

In the front page of the Madrid city hall we can see the results, which are the following:

“Corle” leaded the preferences of the votes with 36.379 votes (32%). It’s author is Joaquín Mallo, an Argentinian nationalized Spanish 24 años ago, which wanted to represent the unity of the different cultures en Madrid through a hand, formed by a continuos line that changes it’s color and shows a M in it’s palm.

And the second place goes for Mirror for the World, with 17.645 votes (15,5%). Made by Rafael Palomares, he has 28 years and his proposal represents the metaphor of Madrid as a mirror for the world during the celebration of the Olimpic Games 2016. Only one line of curve outline, continuous, without any apparent meaning, it makes sense because of the effect of the red surface that converts a scrawl in a message.

And finally the third proposal chosen is Paint the Soul, with 16.298 votes (14,3%). His author, José Luis Aguilera, has also 28 years and wanted to reflect the soul of a city that is the center for tendencies, cultural and artistic movementses that configurates on of it’s main signs of identity: it’s open character and it’s hospitality.

Looks like my predictions weren’t that wrong. These were my favorites:

1. Mirror for the World: It seems a good logo to me, but the concept it’s not transmited with the reliability that his authors proclaim. Aesthetically it’s my favorite and it has the conditions to be a good candidate. With some retouches I believe it should be the desserved winner.
2. CORLE: Costly of printing; easy; nice, direct, human, legible. A valid option for the conservative judges.
3. LIGHT: Costly of print, modern, aesthetically nice, not an original concept original, legible. A valid option for the modern judges. Out of the contest for not fulfilling the requisite of originality.

Related Post:

1. Plagiarism in the candidature of Madrid 2016
2. Logo design: concept VS image
3. My 17 most stupid searching terms

Free: Vectors, Icons, logos…

Here is a bunch of resources, free stuff to add that Wow effect to your designs.

Vecteezy: website full of vectors, please see the license type of every file before using then, some of them are free even for commercial use.

Brusheezy: similar to the previous but Photoshop brushes and paterns.

Logos for free: more than 100.000 logotypes in vector format ready to download.

Flags of the world: flags of every country in the world in different file formats.

Free fonts: lot of fonts to download for free.

Free Icons: more than 12.000 icons for Windows, Mac or Linux. Its mainly for personal use (non commercial), please read the license before using them.

Guides for packaging: A complete guide of standard envelope styles and sizes. The measurements for the finished size as well as the enclosure size are provided for all styles and sizes. Plus, each envelope has a downloadable die line for use with your own design.

Free image bank : this is a older post I wrote with lot of freeimage banks.

Maps in PDF: as easy as opening them in Photoshop and choice the dimensions.

Free Mascot designs : another older post with some of my older mascots, ready to download for free.

3d Models: those models are not for free but I think worth taking a look.

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Win a SOSFactory logo

Brian Aldrich is running the win a SOSFactory logo (or mascot), he is running the contest from his blog, The Prize Blog, this site is a free updated list of contests, games, and prizes available online.

What I have to do to win the contest?

To enter this contest is easy:

1. Write about this contest on your blog.
2. Include a link to this post, and a link to The Prize Blog.

That’s all you have to do to be entered and you could win a professional logo. Each pingback I receive will be an entry into this competiton. Winners will be chosen randomly and announced right here on October 17th 2007.

What is the prize?

Its the usual work I do from my beloved SOSFactory, here you can see some of our lastest designs:

Related Post:

1. Which font is that?
2. Photoshop Tutorial: 3d logo
3. Plagiarism in the candidature of Madrid 2016

Plagiarism in the candidature of Madrid 2016

21-09-2007: Another case of plagiarism the whole contest is a fake
Designed by Luis Coderque, this logo was already created for the brand Madrid. The worst in all this is this designer works for Saffron, the company who do the preselection of the 10 logos… its a shame

A couple of days ago, i wrote a post about the small conceptual base of the logos for Madrid 2016, the case is that we set up a circus and the dwarfs grow… now the plagiarism appears in this competition.

To the right, the logo for Madrid 2016, to the left, screenshot of the website of Augusto Valenti, logo designed by Liberonline

In this case i think it’s more than just a reasonable similarity, intended or not?… we’ll never know. The"author" of this logo is a graphic design student, which makes me ask my question again: wouldn’t it be better to hire an expert designer instead of making a contest?, if they’d have done that, the results would have been the same?

My opinion expressed in words of someone named Pako (comment extracted from EL PAIS):

"This is what happens when they make design contests. They should have asked a designer or a studio directly to make the logo. Of course, they’d have charged more, but the risk that something like this would happen would have been a lot smaller (even if it’s casuality or plagiarism). Anyway, basing the image of such an important event (or the corner bakery) in the "logo" looks absurd to me. They should have created a global strategy of communication and later a global image that, among other things, included the logo. But it’s cheaper to have a contest and also promote the event that way."

Another important comment, of Isa:

"…Appart from the plagiarism, the logo isn’t legible enough, it couldn’t be perfect, that we wouldn’t understand it. Haven’t they taken into account the usability of this logo for it’s different applications? Where’s the minimum reduction?"

And here comes Silvia:

"I’m not a graphic designer or anything like that,but this is practicing a profession without proper qualifications, and in other areas it’d be insulted if not penalized. I don’t understand why from public institucions this type of contest is promoted, that it has this consecuences is normal. We’re leaving a profession in the hands of a box of plastidecor (note: it’s a box of a crayons of a well-known trademark), we’re like this, a country of amateurs"

Now a reflection, as people say: "talk well or bad about me but spell my name". This logo has many people against it, but also some people that defend it, so it may get some votes after all… let’s imagine it wins… the "author" will be pretty popular, what message are we transmitting? I think that logo should be desqualified immediately because it doesn’t fulfill the originality criteria (intentionally or not), and better luck next time. But no… they’ll probably wait until it wins…

CONCLUSION: what starts bad ends bad… some call it though luck, coincidence, matter of taste… i call it small precaution, this contest is a mistake itself. Resignation now!!!

Communicate by Madrid 2016:

We’re doing the corresponding enquiries to see if it’s efectively plagiarism or just a unfortunate coincidence.

In contests open to a massive public this kind of situations happen. The commitement of the foundation Madrid 2016 is to guarantee the authenticity and originality of the winning proposal.

The process of selection has been supervised by a prestigious trademark consultant and we have followed a strict methodology in the selction of the pieces.

It doesn’t exist a tool (website or database) to check the 100% of the originality of a design. In this cases we have to trust in the experience and visual culture of the experts and mainly in the integrity of the contestants.

A solid experts panel - that includes Saffron (one of the most prestigious consultants of trademarks strategy and design), the creative director of Sr.Rushmore (one of the most creative agencies of Spain) and members of the foundation 20016 - have included this design in the top 10 and if it can be proven that it’s plagiarism, it assumes the responsibility in it’s decision and it’ll procede to desqualify the proposal.

Related Post:

1. Madrid 2016 logo winner
2. Logo design: concept VS image
3. Protect yourself against design thieves

Logo design: concept VS image

The olympic candidature of Madrid 2016 is looking, by popular voting, the three better proposals. After the first look, it seemed to me that the candidates fulfiled aesthetically, ones with more success than others … the problem rose at the time to analyse the reasons that this designers adduced to justify his proposals. Except for a pair of proposals everyone presented empty, forced, arbitrary or irrelevant concepts… what led me to ask myself the following questions:

• Why did they chose logos based more on visual aspects than conceptual?
• Is this a generalized mistake of our design? or, of the design in a general level?
• Wouldn’t it be better to hire an expert designer instead of doing a contest? if they have done that, the results would have been the same?
• Who was the in charge of this preselection?
• Is the popular voting the most proper?

Unfortunately, we do not have any information of the designers identity (if they are students or professionals with experience) and much less of the jury that did the preselection but if these are the 10 better proposals out of 2.700 candidates, either in Spain the design goes from bad to worse or I believe that someone in the organizing committee of the candidature needs an urgent brain transplant.

Note: This is my personal opinion, it am not an expert in audiovisual communication nor I have technical knowledges of corporate identity … only common sense.

Correct me if I make a mistake or I am imprecise in any aspect.

The way of moulding the concept seems very ingenious to me “MADRID as MIRROR FOR THE WORLD”. Other question is if we want to transmit this message… Madrid as mirror FOR the world, I would have elected Madrid as mirror OF the world, it seems a little more humble.

According to its authors: “The complete logo allows the easy reading of the message 2M16 (2016) of which the M becomes underlined of MADRID. The 16 rises also as reflection of a 12, as if through the mirror, had gone too far from the disappointment of 2012 to the success of 2016 (remember that Madrid was candidate in give birth to 2012.)”

The concept looks great, but I see it very forced… what he reads is not 2M16 but 2M6 by a side or 2116 by the other, with what all the theory goes down. It seems a meritorious effort, but it looks to me that the explanation was found when the logo was already designed… what a pity.

Graphicly, It seems attractive to me because of the lines simplicity. It is legible in small sizes, and I would be cheap to print because it works in one color, it is modern and dynamic.

CONCLUSION: It seems a good logo to me, but the concept it’s not transmited with the reliability that his authors proclaim. Aesthetically it’s my favorite and it has the conditions to be a good candidate. With some retouches I believe it should be the desserved winner.

Concept: "light"

According to the author: “Madrid is a cosmopolitan, dynamic city, in continuous movement like the light.” It seems simple, correct, but it doesn’t fascinate me. I believe that the organizer of some olympic games has to look outwards, instead of inwards.

It happens the same thing as the previous one, We base the our logo concept on a graphic effect (colors and the effects). What happens if we use it on a white background? Or if we print in one color? So we get a cool icon, but without the concept.

CONCLUSION: Costly of print, modern, aesthetically nice, not an original concept original, legible. A valid option for the modern judges.

21-09-2007: Another case of plagiarism the whole contest is a fake
Designed by Luis Coderque, this logo was already created for the brand Madrid. The worst in all this is this designer works for Saffron, the company who do the preselection of the 10 logos… its a shame.

Concept: “Corle” (another one that I don’t understand.)

“The hand gives the welcome to the ones who wants to get closer to this city, a friendly greeting where the freshness of Madrid and its people is appreciated.”It seems like a preservative logo to me.

“The shape of the hand and his colors represents all the people; nationalities; races; cultures… etc” we return to the same problem of before, what happens if we print in one color?”.

CONCLUSION: Costly of printing; easy; nice, direct, human, legible. A valid option for the conservative judges.

Concept: "Mariz Mariz" (if someone understands it, explain it to
me please).

"How do you receive friends? With a smile.
How do they understand each other? With a conspiratorial wink.
How do we want them to feel if any them visit us? As friends."

In other circumstances I would say it’s a very childlike logo, similar to the polemic logo of the London olympic games 2012 (by the way, the logo of what most people talked in the story of the O.G.) although, It doesn’t seem that bad. It seems to me the least pretentious of all of them… at least do not have to bear stupid metaphysics stuff, which i’m thankful after seeing the other proposals.

CONCLUSION: It is nice, human, simple, easy to remember, legible and cheap of printing. Not very original (London 2012) and maybe too simple in it’s approach.A little risky.

Concept: "A river of illusions"

This seems most "curious" concept of all: "The symbol represents Madrid and its River, recovered and boosted; it has been inspired by a geographic feature that identifies the city. The line claims to be irregular, uninhibited and artistic, as it is the city of Madrid.

The circular shapes remember to the squares of Madrid, sports enclosures and to the Olympic rings."

CONCLUSION: I believe that Madrid has more important things to show to the world than its rivers, aesthetically it is nice, it is legible and easy and cheap of printing . Valid by little.

Concept: "Madrid in action".

The concept does not seem to be the most original of the world but it is coherent:

"The union of people of different cultures and nationalities through the sport and all them under the incomparable blue sky of Madrid, that transmits animation; happiness; vitality; energy, positivism"

Aesthetically It seems funny and beautiful, although I have to say that in the first look i didn’t notice the puppet details, and this is its biggest problem… The reason that gives it that special touch is appreciable only at bigger scales.

To the time of printing would be accesible, because it works in one color.

CONCLUSION: It looks like a nice logo, but only transmits it’s intention at reasonably big scales. It fulfils the rest of the requirements. Not recommendable.

Concept: "Madrid flows".

I thought it was an interesting logo, but when investigating a little on the intentionality the author i had a lot of doubts:

"The mark has a lot of meanings because it’s shapes MAY symbolize various values. In the first place, the use of a wide range of colors that expresses diversity of the elements that has our city. The lines MAY symbolize paths, the tape that the athletes touch when they win, the fringes of a medal or the coexistence of the city’s variety and richness."

The biggest mistake in my opinion was relate "the wide range of colors" to diversity of the city… What would happen if we only print in one color? will our city lose that diversity?

There is a feint of justification of this error:

"The logo is very variable because it doesn’t have an only way in it’s use, several versions can be made and this is like that because the city flows and not always looks the same way."

But it seems abominable, of course that they can make several versions (of this and of all the logos in the world) but the logo has to work in all them.

CONCLUSION: Costly of printing, the concept is totally arbitrary and I think that at small scales we wouldn’t manage to distinguish it, more even if it’s printed in one color. It seems nice aesthetically. Not recommendable.

21-09-2007: Another case of plagiarism… to the right, the logo for Madrid 2016, to the left, screenshot of the website of Augusto Valenti, logo designed by Liberonline

Concept: "We all are Madrid".

Sincerely, I don’t know how a logo like this can be on the top 10 of 2.700 options. I don’t see the concept "We all are Madrid" anywhere. And it’s authors explanation doesn’t help at all: "The brushstroke creates an abstract form that COULD BE the horns of a bull, symbol of force; character; beauty; power; or maybe two people, suggesting solidarity, opening, or MAYBE the forefingers and heart forming the victory sign."

That "could be" or that "maybe", his explanation ambiguity leave me doubts about the intentionality at the time to mould the concept in this logo.

On the other hand, that of showing the horns of a bull … it seems to be too stereotyped and without relation to the event, besides I don’t believe that I represent EVERYBODY, they could not have elected a topic more controversial.

It doesn’t finish convincing me aesthetically, the "hand made" typography doesn’t seem worked at all nor it fits with the artistic air of the icon.

CONCLUSION: Stereotyped, aesthetically incoherent, bad represented, it seems very arbitrary to me. Not even think about it.

Concept: "Dress Madrid".

I will try to be good with this logo, I apologize in advance.

Its author says: "Madrid as open city, that allows everybody newly arrived find its place" When we are transmitting the opposite, I would use this logo to represent CHAOS … Diagonals, different thicknesses, molten and conflicting fonts.

"This spirit is reflected in the logo endowing it with a "graffiti" aesthetic that will favour identity of the natives of Madrid with their logo." The Graffiti as art is a residual activity, I am sure that big part of the inhabitants of Madrid live the Graffiti more like a plague that of the streets than an art manner.

"The upward diagonal sense of the main graphic art and the apparent randomness, freshness and lack of concern express optimism and vitality." I really don’t understand it, in my opinion what he transmits is anxiety; burden; drifting; asphyxia…

I believe that the Madrid word could be more legible if we gave it a little bit more air by its base line.

… "By the transformation of the square through the adjournment of the sides allowing the repetition of the obtained geometry in the two directions." An meaningless paragraph, sounds great though.

CONCLUSION: Concept totally opposite to what should express supposedly, it is stressful aesthetically, It would be barely legible at small scales. The worst of all

Concept: "From Madrid to the Olymp"

The author’s description: "Madrid does not stop in his fight for the O.G. organization and it moves fast to arrive, before or later, to the Olymp’s door" I don’t believe that the important part is the desire of Madrid to manage to be games headquarter… that is pure anecdote, even if it gets it or not.

As it’s tend to say… if you do not have anything positive that to say it’s better to remain quiet; the curious thing, is that after reading the rest of the descriptions this doesn’t seem to be that bad.

CONCLUSION: Indifference.

CONCLUSION: As this competition is image of the manner in which our candidature does everything, I fear that Madrid wont organize a Olimpic Games in looooong time.

Related Post:

1. Madrid 2016 logo winner
2. Plagiarism in the candidature of Madrid 2016
3. Which font is that?

Protect yourself against design thieves

Lately we have been discovering a lot of websites that steal designs from SOSFactory, they are mainly websites dedicated to porn or warez, and as they are illegal activities it looks like it’ll be hard to make them remove our designs. In this post we’ll try to make stealing difficult for bad boys.

But don’t think this only happens to newbies, Britney Spears plagiarizes designs under the protection of the famous cosmetics trademark Elizabeth Arden.

If you want to read more about this case click on the images.

As you can see, plagiarism is something that appears in every level, in our case we have to be realists, in normal conditions no business would risk to plagiarize because it’d be cheaper to buy us the design than the possible consecuences. The ones that steal our designs are more of the porn website style, warez and things like that.

How do we protect our images?

INTELECTUAL PROPERTY REGISTRATION

The first thing you have to do is register your designs in the intelectual property registry offices (if you live outside of Spain go to the culture ministry of your country), if the design is by order your client has to do this, it’ll probably ask you to sign a contract where you give him the rights over the design. You can give them all the rights, only reproduction rights, rights for a specific use… you’ll have to negociate that; if you’re starting, you’ll probably have to give them all the rights.

Design registration is something very simple, you only have to take the designs to the offices (take printed copies) and pay some fees. There’s a little trick to pay less fees, if for example you want to register 30 characters, take them all together, and say for example that are characters of your comic, that way you pay only once instead of 30. If they are for stories, well, say it’s for a story.

There’s something i’ll clarify, the law (at least Spain law) protects the design since it’s creation, this means that just because of being it’s author, only you have rights over it, EVEN IF IT’S NOT REGISTERED, although registering it works as a document to prove that you’re the author in case of plagiarism… otherwise, you’ll have to figure out how to prove you’re the author.

AVOID PORTFOLIO IMAGES FROM BEING STOLEN

About this topic there are thousands of websites and the conclusion is that a perfect method doesn’t exist, all of them have advantages and disadvantages, although we will make it harder for them to steal them:

• Using Flash: create a Flash movie where you put the images, they wont be able to download them directly, but they can always take a screenshot and edit it with Photoshop. Besides, you need to work a lot for this.
• Using Watermarks: it’s extra work, and the designs don’t look the same. It’s one of the most effective methods, but it gives an amateur air to our work that i personally don’t like.
• Javascript, deactivating the right click, various tricks: The same as the rest, with a screenshot they can steal it anyway.

Some advices to minimize damages:

• Never show high resolution images, use only JPG format with 60% quality, that way at least they can’t print in good quality.
• Put in your images a legend like copyright by …. the use without written authorization is prohibited. More than one steals designs only because they’re ignorants.
• Put your website link in all your designs, this way you’ll give some more work to the bad boy… it also works as publicity, you never know where those designs will be.
• Put your designs in complex backgrounds, so it’ll be harder to erase.

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE IMAGE HAS BEEN STOLEN

As i said before, never show high resolution images, this way our desings will rarely be printed… but we still have internet plagiarism.

If we design by order and we give them all the righs over the design this work should be done by the client, but it’s never bad to be concerned about the interests of who feeds us… this will also help in letting us show the work in our portfolio.

Identify the offender

The first thing we have to do is identify the one who is stealing the designs from us. This is why the WHOIS exists, it’s a registry where we can see information about any website. You only have to write the domain name (ie: www.sosnewbie.com) and it will show you the registry information.

The WHOIS RECORD results will tell us who is the owner, it’s contact email and address, and the most important, it’s DOMAIN NAME SERVERS. This gives us information about the business that is hosting them, in my case is downtownhost.

Contact the offender

We contact him via email, letting him know gently that he’s commiting a felony to the intelectual property, that we’re the owners of those designs and we have proof of it (high resolution files, sketchs…) and that if he doesn’t remove those designs we will notify their hosting business to do the necesary actions (ie: erase their hosting account).

If the offender removes the design it’s perfect, mission accomplished. In most of the cases it’s what happens.

Contact the hosting business

If he doesn’t remove it or there are problems regarding the image property, we will procede to contact their hosting which will answer with an email informing us about the procedure to see if what we are saying it’s true.

If everything goes well, in a short while the website will go down… which doesn’t mean that 20 more sites will appear the next day :S

Let’s clarify that using this method the process may be long and hard depending on the quality of the fraud prevention system of the hosting, because we need to collect proofs and send them, so it’s better to always try to resolve the issue directly with the offender. Imagine that as the case of SOSFactory there are hundreds of them.

Contact our client

In the unlikely case that the hosting business is in favor of the offender, all we got is to inform our client what happened to take the necesary measures against the offender and his hosting… in case he considers it appropiate.

CONCLUSION: we can lose a lot with small offenders, in the best of the cases it’ll be a task that demands a lot of time and effort.

There is no perfectly effective method (correct me if i’m wrong), in the best of the cases it will demand extra time and we will only make their work of stealing a little harder.

Let’s take it as the price of success

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1. Privacy Policy

Which font is that?

Do you remember the last time a client asked you to vectorize a logo, you went crazy asking which was the font you used in that logo?. Well, it wont happen again with

My favorite utility to identify fonts

1. Get a high quality image.

If you don’t know a font you just need to get an image of the logo, the bigger the logo is and higher the quality, you’ll get better results.

To explain how it works we will use our SOSFactory logo.

The font used is Nasalization, let’s see if this web application works correctly.

2. Prepare the image

As you can see, our logo had text effects that makes the font identification harder.

So we’ve cleaned the logo all we could. Some advices to get the best results:

1. Try to get the maximum possible of the font letters .
2. Use the most significative characters of the font.
3. Horizontal image of about 140 x 1500 pixels.
4. Best format: Tiff, gray scale at 300 dpi
5. Use images with a good contrast, for example black over white.

3. Let’s go to what the font?’s website

Let’s visit what the font? as you can see, just hit the button “Search” (Examinar), the search the image in your hard drive and click “Upload”.

4. Help the automated identifier

The automatic application works pretty good, although it may confuse with the special characters.

It’s as simple as changing the boxes with wrong characters.

Remember the letters are case sensitive. When we finish, we just need to hit the “Search” button

5. Check out the results.

As you can see, the results are great

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