I still can’t quite believe it… I’m going to be on the jury for Logo Lounge book 9! This has to be a highlight of my year (even my life) – I’m extremely excited to be part of it, and what’s even better… Bill Gardner has kindly allowed me to blog and talk about the experience, so I can give others an insight into what it’s like to be on the jury to select the best 2000 logo designs from over 30,000 submitted.
What’s Logo Lounge?
Logo Lounge is both a logo design book series as well as an online database with over 200,000 logos and brand identities from more than 100 countries. It’s described as the place to get a real-time look at logo design trends as they happen.
Every year a new book is released, with the next being book 9 which will include logos submitted between April 5th, 2013 and October 31st, 2014. Check out the beautifully animated video below for more details.
How did I get invited?
It was around a year ago that I joined Logo Lounge to gain access to its database and so I could submit my work too, however, I’ve been following the logo design trend report for as long as I’ve been a professional graphic designer, so I have known of the books for some years.
Being a logo geek I’ve also followed the activities of Logo Lounge, to the point that I’m a fan of Bill Gardner, the company founder. His recent book ‘Logo Creed’ is an excellent read for real world logo designers, and his tutorials on Lynda Learning are very good too. The company are adding real value to the design community which I respect, and admire too.
It was around 3 years ago that I started creating my own online group for logo designers, my way of giving back to the design community. I started on Facebook with my group “Be a Logo Geek”. At the time most of the money I was making through side projects went back into advertising the group, and I believe it was this early activity that meant that the Logo Lounge Facebook group started following me. The community was small at this stage, but I’ve continued to actively work on the group every day. On twitter, I’ve recently hit 25,000 followers and have no plans to stop – I genuinely love helping other designers – and it helps me to learn too.
For a number of years, I’ve been engaging with the Logo Lounge both on twitter and Facebook too. I frequently share their blogs, and also give positive feedback too (just because it’s great) – I had no idea that Bill was seeing any of it… until I had a telephone call a few weeks back…
A telephone call from Bill Gardner
I was sat working on designs (as you do) when the phone rang. I quickly checked it, and as it was a long distance number so I decided to ignore it… a voicemail was left, so I decided to listen to the message expecting it to be a wrong number.
It was a voicemail from Bill Gardner. I almost dropped the phone…
It was like getting a call from a rock star! He mentioned that he’s enjoyed following my group online, and would like to know if I would be interested in contributing to his next book. I honestly couldn’t believe it… wow! I was speechless…
I called back the following day and left a message with a colleague. When Bill did call back we had a really enjoyable conversation. We spoke about the group, my work and plans too. He asked me if I would like to join the jury for the next book – and of course, I accepted.
I still can’t believe it… It’s a real honour.
The judging starts shortly after the deadline (October 31st, 2014) so I will continue my story once the judging commences…