Carsonified

By Elliot Jay Stocks

In his comment on part 4, Andy Croll raised a really interesting point:

It did remind me of the US university sports team logo thing you often see on GAP or A&F sweatshirts, [and] that kinda nods to a community / all-in-it-togetherness that you get as a sports team

That’s what it had been reminding me of! And I certainly don’t have a problem with that - I think the “all-in-it-togetherness” of that logo style may well have been subconsciously influencing me anyway. The point is: despite bearing some similarities to the Coca Cola, Carlsberg, and possibly other identities that begin with ‘c’, I’m going to run with it for a bit. I don’t think the logo’s criticisms are strong enough to warrant an outright rejection just yet… but speak up if you think I’m wrong!

The next step I took was probably the most enjoyable: I started tracing over a print-out, modifying the type by hand. And it was at that moment that I realised the beauty of a hand-drawn, sketchy, work-in-progress type of aesthetic was exactly what I was after! The images are below; scroll down to the video if you want a detailed explanation.

Basic modification

On the train home, I started drawing over a print-out with some ideas on how to alter the characters.

Hand-traced over the print-out

This one’s with the suggested modifications from the sketch above, but actually I don’t think they worked.

Hand-traced over again but better this time

More subtle refinements. Note that I’ve changed the swash from the ‘n’ to the ‘f’, despite what I said before about not wanting to do that. Check out the video (at the bottom of this post) for a detailed explanation. Also, there’s a larger version here.

Vectoried version

This adds a bit of neatness while retaining the hand-drawn quality of the previous image (this is still rough, by the way - it was a quick experiement with Illustrator’s ‘Live Trace’ tool). There’s a larger version here.

By Elliot Jay Stocks

I’ve split the videos for part 4 into two: 4a explores what it means to be ‘Carsonified’ and summarises the thoughts from yesterday’s meeting, and 4b is a screencast about one particular logo idea that’s starting to stick…

I hope you’re still enjoying these, guys. Your comments so far have been extremely helpful - thanks so much - so please feel free to keep expressing your opinions!

Part 04a:

Part 04b:

By Elliot Jay Stocks

After recording yesterday’s screencast, I knuckled down to some more logo ideas, refining some of the font manipulation I’d started on Photoshop and Illustrator. I’d begun doing this after hand-sketching yielded poor results, but after a while the kerning and of letters and tweaking of ascender heights seemed a little empty: it was just too precise for this early on in the process. So I went back to my notebook to get a bit more freedom and perspective…

Drawing in my trusty book offered a nice change from the computer, but having the computer there was still too distracting, so I took a stroll to our local park and sat by the river. No digital distractions - just a pen, paper… and some beautiful scenery!

The new environment helped immediately, as did the inspiration from a great book I took along with me (ok, one distraction!): the excellent Tres Logos, published by Die Gestalten Verlag. So today I’m posting some of the drawings, and although they’re rough - very rough - I’d love to get your thoughts on which ideas could warrant some further investigation. In the screencast below, I’ll take you through some of my own thoughts…

As the sketches lose some of their clarity in the video compression, I’ve posted some of the scans to our Flickr account. Click on the preview images below to view the full-size versions.

By Elliot Jay Stocks

Ok, this is a proper screencast this time! :) In episode two, I discuss logo inspiration and talk through a few examples from LogoPond. This is for the benefit of regular viewers and the Carsonified team - I never knew screencasting could be so useful!

by Lisa Price

For anyone planning on attending next year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival, the event’s Panel Picker is now live!

We’ve submitted the following proposals:

• Getting Things Done Are you being crushed under a sea of unopened e-mail? Do you start one project only to be distracted by another? This panel will bring you tricks and tips from the masters, a look behind the scenes at the workflow of top studios, and inspire you to streamline your daily chores. Are you ready to become a GTD ninja?
• Fire your freelancer, now! Following on from the controversial post here on Carsonified, this panel will ask, as freelancers become more expensive and offshore employees become more of a real proposition, should you be thinking about firing your freelancer and out-sourcing your projects? We’ll talk to some people who have gone down the off-shore route and those who haven’t to find out where the future lies.
• Pedantic Semantics: Using Subtlety to Fight Lazy Web Design As designers, it’s in our nature to agonise over the details - perhaps even to an obsessive degree. But this level of perfectionism should be celebrated and embraced, especially when it comes to applying that ethos to our markup. Care about semantics! Care about code indentation! Care about class names! Only through perfectionism can we convert the non-believers who are content to mark up sites like MySpace.
• How to sell a web app The goal of many web app developers is to sell it or to be acquired but how does this happen? What are buyers looking for? What should you avoid when trying to sell? What should you actively promote? All this answered and more.

If you like the sound of these panels, please vote!

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/2/q:carson

By Elliot Jay Stocks

Well, you’ve all read about our decision to rebrand Carson Systems as Carsonified; now the process begins! Harking back to our ‘barenakedapp’ days, we’ll be documenting as much of the creative process as possible and showing you the project as it develops along the way. I’ve recorded the first of several screencasts (well, videos) relating to the project, so hit the play button and leave us your comments!

(Apologies for the low sound levels, by the way…)

We’ve got exciting news!

We’re changing our name from Carson Systems to Carsonified. It’s amazing how it happened and I think it demonstrates what I love about our company.

Let me give you a bit of back-story …

We’ve been contemplating changing our company name from Carson Systems for quite a while now - with ‘Carson Media’ being one of the main contenders. This was because the ‘Systems’ in Carson Systems just didn’t make sense any more. I chose that back when I was a developer, believing that all I’d be doing was building software.

Since then we’ve branched out into creating websites (Vitamin), a ton of blogging (BareNakedApp, Carsonified and more), building web apps (DropSend and Amigo), events (FOWA, FOM, FOOA and FOWD) and social meetups (FOWA Road Trip and BD4D). Rather than just doing web app development, we see ourselves as a web company, run by people by who are passionate about the web.

So, Gill and I were contemplating this name change, but we really hated ‘Carson Media’. It just sounded so corporate and souless - everything we despise. We’re excited about producing quality products, being friendly and kind, having integrity and connecting people.

Then one beautiful summer’s day a couple of weeks ago, we had a team meeting in the local beer garden, and I mentioned that Gill and I didn’t think we would be changing the company name after all, and that we’d stick with Carson Systems.

Instantly, the mood of the meeting dived. Everyone went quiet and seemed to hate the idea of keeping our existing name. Gill picked up on this and said “So, any ideas on what we can change it to?”.

Lisa had already been thinking about this and said, “I really think ‘Carsonified’ could work as a company name”: the reasoning was that it was already in place as the name of the company blog, and being part of the conversation about issues in the web industry is core to what we want to do, it’s something that can be easily applied to all of our projects (a lot of people get confused between our events, Vitamin and our blogs - having one logo and company identity that’s got a bit of zing will make that clearer) and it just sounds fun and energetic, sentiments we all share about the company, and hope that feeling emanates from the things that we do.

Suddenly everyone was bouncing around ideas. Elliot mentioned that he had been sketching logo ideas for the Carsonified blog on the train and I said “Go back to the office and get that sketchpad!” (See below)

It was amazing! There was a palpable buzz around the table (maybe the beer had something to do with it too?). I realized that I had been guilty of suppressing everyone’s excitement and innovation by trying to systematize everything as we grew the company. What we needed was room for everyone to breath and be creative again.

What’s even more surprising and rewarding for me, is that this was a democratic decision. This wasn’t something that Gill and I decided and then implemented, this was the team coming up with the idea and feeling enthused by it. And we can’t wait to get rockin.

I feel as if we’re returning to our roots again - focusing on what’s really important to us:

1. Encouraging the web community
2. Participating in the conversation about making the web a better place
3. Commitment to integrity and quality
4. Friendliness and kindness

So we’re going to be re-branding as Carsonified (without the exclamation mark :D) and we’ll be launching the new brand in a few weeks. Look out for more things to be Carsonified!