Fact is, none of these brands started out as they are now, nor were as recognizable or famous. No brand is born in the final stage of accomplishment and recognition these brands have achieved. Both these brands have, in their 30+ years, invested loads of money to become what they are now. Their visual identity is ever evolving, as it should be.

THE EVOLUTION OF A BRAND

Apple was incorporated in 1976 (over 30 years ago) and has survived its share of ups and downs, having only now achieved a very established product line and a huge following.

Prior to adopting the bitten Apple as its logo, Apple used a complex logo featuring Isaac Newton sitting below an apple tree (as seen to the left). The words APPLE COMPUTER CO. were drawn on a ribbon banner ornamenting the picture frame. The frame itself held a quotation from Wordsworth: “Newton…A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought…Alone.” Apple’s first logo was designed by Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne (two of the original founders).

This didn’t last long and was replaced by Rob Janoff’s “rainbow Apple,” the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it, possibly as a tribute to Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity (the apple) and the separation of light by prisms (the rainbow colors). This was one of several designs Janoff presented to Jobs in 1976.

The rainbow version lasted up until 1998, with the roll out of the new iMac. Apple began the use of a monochromatic logo — supposedly at the insistence of a newly re-inaugurated Jobs — nearly identical in shape to its previous rainbow incarnation.

THE FACE OF APPLE – (TYPEFACE THAT IS)

But not only has the Apple logo changed over the years, it’s type treatment — meaning the font and style that the name Apple Computer was written in — has changed dramatically over the years. Apple’s high-design culture has always been a top priority for Steve Jobs. Perhaps this is a result of calligraphy and typeface design classes that he took in college.

The first-bitten apple in 1977 had a very modern and techno-style font (Motter Tektura). Curiously, the original apple’s “bite” was designed to fit snugly with the Motter Tektura “a”. It later changed in 1984, with the introduction of the Macintosh, to a more narrow variation of the classic Garamond typeface. This typeface was virtually synonymous with Apple for almost two decades and formed a large part of Apple’s excellent brand recognition. It was not only used in conjunction with the logo, but also in manuals, ads, and labeling.

Even today the association continues; falsified images of rumored Apple products and spoof advertisements often use the Apple Garamond font despite the fact that it is no longer current. A little after introducing the iPod, Apple realized the Garamond font looked too classical for their new product line, so they changed from their famous serif font to a non-serif, more modern font called Myriad. Once again it was a variation of the original font (as you can see in the image on the right, there are some small differences in spacing and the letter “o” is a little more elongated).

In the meantime, Apple continued developing a minimalistic approach to their ads and their packaging, reaching levels of complete abstraction, where no information is placed beside a product shot and logo. This goes perfectly with what the company sells, which is the design of their products and ease of use. This abstraction became Apple’s signature on every material produced by the company, with great use of white space and clean, uncluttered designs (just like their products).

This goes to show that even the smallest detail, even a typeface, can have a huge impact on one’s brand. From left to right is shown Apple’s original logo, Apple’s classical logo, and Apple’s newest logo – which is usually shown without “Apple” next to it. The name is shown here for demonstration purposes only. Notice, even, that Apple dropped computer from their name altogether.

Interesting enough, I couldn’t figure out if they would drop it completely or replace it. I knew my experience with Starbucks is not just about Coffee, there is so much more to it. Then yesterday I saw news of the redesign they will launch in the spring and it all made sense. The logo with no words. And next to it just Starbucks. Brilliant.

Another detail I loved was that they released a full page on their website explaining the change. With reasoning and photos of what to expect. So different from something like the Gap rebrand from last year.

There is method to my madness. Said method was passed along to me by my neighbors talking dog. (via @badbanana)

Working on the creative industry can be maddening. And sometimes it’s really hard to see that you can have a process or methodology to help your creativity instead of just going completely insane.

By all means, keep in mind I am not trying to sell my method as the right or only way to anything. Staying on top of your creativity is a weird game and one that has no perfect and defined set of rules (like most things creative).

This means create your own set of rules and live by them. This post is here to try and give you some direction and ideas on how to be able to keep doing creative work without burnout or losing your mind. Everyone has their own tricks to be able to get their brain pumping. These are some of the ones that have long worked for me:

1. Make lots of notes

Have a piece of paper and a pen or moleskine and pencil (whatever catches your fancy) always ready and next to you. Making sure you are always writing down your ideas will not only help you by making it easy to keeping track of them but also by making you feel safe your ideas won’t be lost or go to waste. This feeling of safety can, subconsciously, trick your brain into coming up with even more ideas. (I also like to use Evernote and Things on the iPhone to help with that).

2. Have an idea log

Not only write your ideas down but organize them. Throw old stuff away. Re-write stuff from old pieces of paper to new, clean ones with more space and throw the old ones away. Type it all on the computer if you’d like, that way you’ll read them again to yourself and not only can you become inspired for more ideas but you can probably pick the good ones from the bad ones. (I use 37signals Backpack for organizing my blog post ideas, I write down titles, URLs and anything else I find important to make the process of writing easier later on).

3. Benchmark (learn from the best)

Visit websites that offer inspiration ideas, visit friends websites, visit sites from the competition, by all means navigate the web and see what is around you as much as it is possible. There are a lot of good websites out there and a lot of them excel on one detail or another (like shown in Pattern Tap) and by navigating these you might be inspired to come up with solutions for your design problems. Also, read books, (lots of them) look at book covers, look at product packaging on your local store, etc.

In reality, good design is all around you. The problem is, if you’re not paying real attention to it, good design is invisible, it just blends in with your expectations. (What helps keeping me organized and with a good collection of materials I find online and off is Littlesnapper on the mac and on the iPhone. With it I make my own collection of logos, fonts, sites and packaging that I enjoy and where I can always revisit and look for inspiration).

4. Breaks are your friends

If you think that you’ll have a great idea after 18 hours working straight you’re wrong. Take breaks. Switch between projects. Something I heard a long time ago in college and really worked for me: Write down your ideas, put them in a drawer and look at them tomorrow morning. If they still look good, pursue them.

If you don’t have time for all that, go drink a cup of coffee or tea. You could also try closing your eyes for five minutes. Some say that this makes your brain achieve maximum performance and a moment of thought organizing can be providential for you to keep sanity intact and to get the calm feeling of flow that usually helps you reaching great insights.

5. Have a life

A very important part of being a creative professional and of keeping your sanity, is having moments where you forget you are a creative professional. You need to experience things in life and make the best of it. Watching good movies, listening to music, playing video games, going on fun trips or walks. Anything that you like, that is not related to being a creative worker bee. All that is essential to getting good and interesting information in your brain. So, when you need to dive in deep into your thoughts and come up with a revolutionary new concept for that client of yours, having life experiences could make the difference.

CONCLUSION

As I said before, these are the ideas from my work experience to help others achieve their own methodology. But it’s important to have one, specially in the fast-paced environment we live in where we are suppose to squeeze out ideas from our brains daily, and they all have to be good. Creating your own methodology and being able to use on a day to day basis, and being able to produce good creative work daily, may very well be the difference between sanity and insanity.

By the way, this post was inspired by the Burnout article by Scott Boms for A List Apart, and by the movie Crazy People with Dudley Moore.

THE EARLY DAYS

In the old days (internet time runs faster than real world time), delivering your content would usually mean buying your own domain, hiring a hosting service, a development and design company and then sharing your information with the world. Then, you would have all your information sitting somewhere, not really doing anything, waiting for people to see it. Next step would be investing even more money in spreading the content out by buying ads and focusing on getting everyone to visit that website that you paid to build.

Back then, people still used to call the Internet, an information superhighway and most people would only use it for information of some sort.

NEW TOOLS, NEW CHALLENGES

Time has changed and with it came the Age of Social Medias and Aggregators,a time of embedding and Retweeting. All of a sudden you can build a Facebook page for free, create a Twitter account, a Blogger account for yourself or your company, and you can use that to share all the information you written to an unlimited amount of people.

More and more companies are coming to see that here indeed lies the future of information delivery. Since social medias, like Twitter, are so spread out now, they make you feel like the internet is ubiquitous, like you’re not even on the internet at all. It’s as though all this information is delivered directly to you. And with the advent of the iPhone (and other smart phones and their softwares) and specially the advent of Push notifications, we are arriving at a time where the gap between online and offline is almost non-existent.

And that’s why we see a shift on companies communications. A large number of companies are abandoning (or at least not focusing too much on) their corporate websites and investing heavily in announcing their Twitter and their Facebook accounts. Even in old media ads like TV, radio and print trying to get consumers signed up to receive their every post directly. That way, it seems, the advertisement consumers that companies were afraid to lose because of DVRs and online TV streaming services, like Hulu, are now basically subscribing to the companies they like and accepting to receive ads from these companies delivered straight to them.

SPOON-FED CONTENT

This creates a new form of consumer. A consumer of directly spoon-fed content, that is less a consumer and more in a reality a “follower” or a “fan” of the companies and products he or she consumes. This also shows, that there’ll be a drastic change on the internet, with it becoming more and more ubiquitous, where we will be able to receive the content we want without having to go trough sites and portals. Content will finally be able to be omnipresent, delivered straight to you from whoever you accept (and that acceptance is key). With that Content will regain the title of King of the web (regain since the web was created with the sole purpose of sharing and distribute knowledge/content). And whoever holds the key to the delivery of this content, holds the key to an unlimited amount of consumers.

I’ve started reading and talking on Twitter with other designers, such as @nikibrown about this idea that was denigrating the design profession and felt that I had to give my 2 cents about it (read Niki’s ideas about this subject on her blog post). I’ve twitted about it, but that wasn’t enough. So, here it is.

The issue is Tutorial Blogs. It seems like I can’t turn left or right without reading about a design blog post saying things like “50+ tutorials on how-to create the perfect logo” or “Tutorial on how to create an awesome portfolio layout”. And I think to myself: “What?!”.

First of all, if you need a tutorial to teach you how to design your own design portfolio, you are in trouble. You may need ideas on what to say, how to style the CSS for some nice effect, or the latest JQuery technique you want to implement. But you CAN’T honestly say there is a tutorial on how to design your own portfolio. It is your page, your identity, your voice. Even if you’re a beginner, you should always focus not on reading tutorials that promise to give you a final product, but the ones that teach the techniques that will help you create your own. (example)

Second, since when did designing a logo become just like a food recipe? You should have a logo creation process. But learning to make a good logo or an identity system is not something you can just follow 10 steps and it’s done. There is no easy as 1-2-3 process that can make one perfect logo every time. It takes thought process, sketching, testing, presenting to the client. Even when you have your own process, it will not be 100% all the time. Creating takes time and takes being inspired, and sometimes, even when all that is there you still can’t convince your client that what you have created is the best solution for them.

So, I decided to do what I used to do with my Design students in Brazil and show you what’s out there, call out names and say what’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Tutorials.

GOOD

• Websites like Smashing Magazine that either reference good design as inspiration or show techniques for you to create your own stuff.
• Websites like A List Apart that have trend defining and defying articles that help anyone involved with web design at one time or another. (BTW, this one is a must-read).
• And websites like JQuery for Designers, CSS Tricks and others, that explore and teach techniques to help you get exciting features done on your own work. The quality of the explanations and accompanying screencasts set this one aside for me, and I wish these were available when I was a newcomer or when I was teaching.

BAD

• Websites like Desizntech and others, that make posts on how to create your own “grunge” portfolio. I mean, please, any designer that has a portfolio created following a tutorial like this one, shouldn’t be taken seriously at all.
• Websites like SpoonGraphics promising step by step how-tos on creating a logo. SpoonGraphics is a good blog and sometimes has decent tutorials but they shouldn’t be promising what they can’t give you.
• And unfortunately, good websites like bittbox that sometimes post tutorials on stuff like glossy vector logos web 2.0 style in 5 steps.

UGLY

• And for me, the ugly here is not only creating this kind of content, but passing it on. So, websites like, Six Revisions when they do posts like, 15 excellent logo tutorials and include some of the ones mentioned here in the list make me feel really sick. (Six Revisions is not a bad blog, on the contrary, most of the time I enjoy their stuff, but they did post the logo tutorials, and that’s why I used them as an example. A lot more websites redistribute this stuff, and more than half only redistribute and don’t even produce content which is even worst ).

Conclusion is: have your own opinion, have an identity and a mind of your own. Use the tutorials for what their worth, which is learning new techniques and growing the set of tools available for you to be a better designer. Don’t get caught in this simplistic idea that you can just follow a simple 1-2-3 step and make great design and loads of money. Design is strategy, it’s visuals applied to marketing and your clients objectives. And all these tutorials just make it seem like our profession, is unnecessary and meaningless, when it couldn’t be further away from the truth.