I figured that one of the long poles in the tent on getting Chit Chat Across the Pond started would be getting a logo for the show. I know there are great services out there that will design artwork for you, but I also know that there are a lot of talented folks in the NosillaCast community. I put out the plea (rather weakly) on the show last week for the NosillaCastaways to send me their ideas for a logo for the new Chit Chat Across the Pond podcast. Nothing happened. No ideas came out.
Then I got an awful, evil idea. I created my own logo and threatened to use it if no one came up with something better. If you’re listening to this, just imagine what a logo would look like created by an engineer with no right brain whatsoever. I opened up Art Text, drew a free form blob to represent a lake, and dragged a gradient blue fill across it. Then I wrote Chit above and to the left, and Chat below and to the right. Boom, ugly logo finished.
I then posted this monstrosity in our G+ community at podfeet.com/googleplus, on Twitter, and on Facebook. The reaction was tremendous! In 2-3 days I had contributions flowing in! They all said that it was the threat that got them moving.
Allister Jenks was first out of the gate with an interesting idea. He created a background of a flickering pool and then put silhouettes of two people’s heads at diagonals. It was beautiful and got the idea across. Keith Murray did something similar where he took an image of water with raindrops falling on it and added a beautiful font with Chit and Chat really big and Across the in smaller letters in between. I like the emphasis on Chit and Chat and Bart liked the raindrops (said they reminded him of home).
Joseph Nilo was just goofy but it was too funny not to tell you about. He took a photo of Daniel Craig as James Bond and put Chit in the upper left, Chat in the lower right. Took me 2 days to get the joke. Chit Chat Across the Bond. Get it?
George from Tulsa created a completely different look. He took a photo of a very old globe he has that shows the international shipping lanes between Europe and the US and added text that said Chit Chat Across the Pond across it in a super cool ancient looking font. That was fun too.
But then Terry Austin weighed in with his design. He found a $15 Mac App Store app called Logoist and started to doodle around with some ideas. He sent one to me on Telegram and I instantly fell in love with the concept. It’s much more stylistic than anything the rest of us had come up with, and in fact it doesn’t even have water in it! I never would have chosen the colors but they go together beautifully, it’s navy blue, a lighter, perhaps periwinkle blue and the other color is orange of all things. Again, I never would have chosen this but everyone agrees that it’s fabulous.
I really want to thank everyone who jumped in and gave a hand here, sharing their ideas and talents. I punished Terry for his great work by telling him that he has to do a review of Logoist for us now. No good deed goes unpunished!