Today while I was working on one of our client’s new websites and in between Twitter posts and IM’s, I came up with an idea for a new project. Don’t worry you will all get a glimpse of it soon. With this new idea I needed to come up with a new logo and I did so tonight with some help for two great sources of inspiration.

The first being a book that I grabbed off of the shelf at the office called Logo Lounge. My brother picked up this book a while back and I have seen several like it before. However, I highly recommend this one since it is simple. It consists of all types of Logos from all over the world and the book is categorized into styles of logos such as Typography, Initials, People, Birds, you name it. I went through this book tonight for about an hour looking at logos, some familiar others not so. I finally put the book down because I was getting frustrated thinking about how I didn’t want to “rip off” a logo from a product that already existed.

Instead, I started watching the Food Network and eventually found my way back to my laptop to give it another go. All the time Diane had been sitting on the couch taking apart dozens of picture frames that she has been collecting from thrift stores, clearance racks and the occasional yard sale. Since before we had moved in to the new house, we have had the idea to decorate our house with strange vintage advertisements, hence the collection of frames. To help with decor, Diane’s parents found two very old issues of LIFE magazine and gave them to us over Thanksgiving. How old? 1936. Oddly enough, beat up 1936 LIFE magazines are really not that valuable in terms of resale. What they are valuable in are the number of great advertisements inside of their pages.

Diane had carefully taken each issue apart and divided the ads into groups, Hygiene, Liquor and Oppressed Women. She then pitched each ad to me as if we were in an episode of Mad Men to see which ones I felt would be acceptable for the house. Don Draper, eat your heart out. Some I liked, others were just dull, or too hard to understand. One thing I did notice, advertisers used a lot more ad copy in the 30′s. When all was said and done we had decided on over a dozen new ads and Diane had them framed up. Looking at this new collection, it hit me how simple the logos for these companies really are, Johnnie Walker, Royal Typewriters, Electrolux, and even Ex Lax. All of these have simple logos made up of only great typography, no icons needed.

I booted up Photoshop and I had a new logo for my new project finished in a matter about 10 minutes. I love when inspiration hits and it makes you want to stay up all night coming up with more ideas.