Even during the logo competition for BarCamp Bangalore 9 (BCB9) in August, 2010, I was thinking about the logo for BCB10. BarCamp Bangalore 10 is happening on 11-June-2011 at SAP Labs. Being a fan of films, I have decided to make a typographic logo for BCB10 similar to the title design of the Hollywood flicks X-Men and XXX.

This is my logo that was created as part of the BCB10 logo competition. Click on the image for a larger view. Read on to know more about the design thoughts.

‘Genesis’ of the BCB-X logo

Michelangelo painted some scenes of Genesis in the Sistine Chapel, Rome that shows God creating man. The ‘touch of life’ is an inspiration for countless stories and designs.

BarCamp Bangalore is infusing life to the minds of Gen X and Gen Y. This idea made me to depict the ’10′ using the Roman numeral ‘X.’

The fonts used are ‘Magneto’ and ‘Niagara Solid.’ ‘Magneto’ has a classic, yet modern appeal. It is seen widely on modern technology based products. The ‘X’ is actually a flipped version of the ‘X’ found in the ‘Magneto.’ I did this to have a uniform width connection between the ‘bcb’ and ‘X.’ To gel both the fonts, I had to convert ‘Niagara Solid’ to a slanting format.

Version 2.0

As the logo started growing on me, I chanced upon an improvement of the logo. This modified version 2.0 shows the ‘X’ as a younger person who hand-holds the ‘bcb’ and marches on to a new future. The BarCamp logo is shifted towards the ‘X’ so that it forms a face that smiles.

Wish me luck for the BCB10 logo competition.

Image Credits

• Genesis by Michelangelo: Jeff and Joy Scott Family
• Signboard: Ilker, Turkey
• Rusty sign: Zsuzsanna Kilian, Hungary

Update on 10-June-2011

The results of BCB10 logo competition is announced.

And, I didn’t win. I would like to thank you for your ‘likes’ and comments in the competition page.

Design date: 03-Jun-2011

Barcamp Bangalore 9 (‘BCB9’) is happening on 18-Sep-2010. They are conducting a logo competition. I was brainstorming for a logo idea.

‘Talk of the town’
Much later, from the phrase ‘talk of the town,’ I came up with the above logo. Base of the design is a ‘9’ in Century Gothic font. The appearance of ’9′ is changed so that it looks like a single quotation mark that represents ‘communication.’

A speech bubble is incorporated into the design that contains the BarCamp logo. The placement of the elements is manipulated in such a way that ‘Bangalore’ on the logo is speaking about BarCamp. Clearly ‘the talk of the town!’

Following is an attempt on the branding of BCB9. Click on the images for a larger view.

An earlier version

This option with a green tint and a different placement, size of elements is later replaced with the current version.

Update on 13-Sep-2010

The results of BCB9 logo competition are announced today and I didn’t win. Thanks to all the people who voted for my design.

And, congratulations to Soujanya Sreenath, the winner!

Update on 21-Sep-2010: BarCamp Kerala 9 — BCK9

BarCamp Kerala Edition 9 is happening on 14-Nov-2010 at Amrita Campus, Karunagapally. Thanks to the organizers of BCK9, they adopted a reworked version of this BCB9 logo.

BCK9 Logo

BCK9 Wallpaper (1200×900)
Click on the image to download the wallpaper.

Photograph Credits

1. ‘Billboard’ by Asif Akbar
2. ‘Auto rickshaws on the way to Mysore’ by Matthew Logelin
3. ‘Hand tag’ by Marcelo Silva

Softwares: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
Design date:
Ver.0.9 BCB9 — 12-Aug-2010
Ver.1.0 BCB9 — 20-Aug-2010
Ver.2.0 BCK9 — 21-Sep-2010

Now, a happy news
Barcamp Bangalore 8 (also known as ‘BCB8’) is happening on 7th and 8th of March 2009. As usual, they organised a logo competition.  After 25 days of online voting, I am fortunate to get 27 votes from netizens and emerged as the winner.
This ‘Mobius’ logo (Ver.2.1) is selected as the official logo of BCB8. What follows now is a detailed description about its evolution.

The ‘Mirror’ Work
Out of some five doodle concepts in my notebook, I selected two. The first one is ‘Mirror.’
When we mirror an uppercase ‘B,’ it resembles the numeral ‘8.’ This idea materialised into the above logo (Ver.1.0).

After uploading this logo in the Barcamp website, I received some comments regarding the absence of the city name ‘Bangalore’ from the logo. I changed the mirrored ‘barcamp’ into a mirrored ‘bangalore.’ Another comment was about the remotely placed Barcamp logo. So, the barcamp logo is brought to the centre and served as the background for the mirrored ‘B’ or ‘8.’
Barcamp officials did not select this logo (Ver.1.1). The reason for this may be the difficulty in including such a big logo in T-shirts. Steiner is the font used in the ‘Mirror’ design.

The Matrix connection
By some strange reason, the film ‘The Matrix’ was featured in Barcamp Bangalore webpage about BCB8 when the competition was announced. That prompted me to use ‘NEO experience’ as the tagline.

It is ‘Mobius;’ not Morpheus
An influence of Mobius Strip is there in this second design that finally got selected. The way it coils to form an ‘8’ adds to the purpose. To get the feel of italics font, a tweaking of 10 degrees is given to all the elements including the Barcamp logo. The following is Ver.1.0 of the logo.
As discussed earlier, ‘Bangalore’ was added to the logo.  The modified logo is shown below (Ver.1.1).
More comments followed and the curious looking ‘b’ and ‘p’ alphabets are reverted to the normal font. The Mobius ‘8’ is positioned at the centre encircling the alphabet ‘c.’ The ‘sidelined’ barcamp logo is also shifted to the centre to allude a symmetry. The modified logo is shown below (Ver.2.0).
The final iteration came when I was asked to drop the ‘Neo Experience’ tagline as it can be misleading. This version (2.1) is now declared as the official BCB8 Logo. Yanone Kaffeesatz is the font used in this ‘Mobius’ design.

Photoshop or Illustrator?
Mobius Ver.2.1 is entirely created in Adobe Illustrator while all the other versions are in Adobe Photoshop. Why? I am much faster in Photoshop than Illustrator. So the conversion of an ‘itching’ doodle idea into soft copy is easier in Photoshop. Once an idea is finalized and the final product needs to be delivered for printing, vector format (read as Adobe Illustrator) is the best bet. GIMP comes handy in changing the PNG image sizes to make small badges for the event publicity.

Glimpses of the Event

Day 2 of BCB8 (08-Mar-2009); Photo courtesy: fullFx

Flash back
I tried my luck at BCB7 some months back, but I didn’t win. You may read the related blog post here.

Sign off
We would like to dedicate this achievement to all the people who commented or criticized our work and thus helped to improve. Thank you, the BCB8 people!

Softwares: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, GIMP
Design dates:
Ver.1.0 — 04-Feb-2009
Ver.1.1 — 23-Feb-2009
Ver.2.0 — 24-Feb-2009
Ver.2.1 — 28-Feb-2009

A designer tries to convey an idea through a design. If others are connecting to the same idea, the design is a success. As a designer, I am very happy after seeing the above comments for my logo design from people who are strangers to me.

Introduction

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The original logo is created by Eris Stassi.

Barcamp has an arm in Bangalore, India. They are conducting a technology workshop this week (13 and 14 September) and this is its seventh edition. A contest was organised by Barcamp to design a logo for the event that will eventually appear in posters, banners and t-shirts. When I came to know about the contest from my brother, I decided to take the plunge.

Inspiration
“When I’m creating a logo, I always like to embed a clever little idea into the design — even if it’s just a word mark, or an icon, it’s got to have some kind of little creative element, some extra layer of meaning.”
These are the words from Richard Scott, a well-known designer. Inspired by his words, I decided to use a ‘Bar,’ a ‘Camp,’ and a ’Seven’ in the logo. But how?

Thought Process
The official Barcamp logo looks like a ‘fire’ if rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Can I use it as a ‘camp fire?’ Suddenly, the picture became clearer. I will make a camp fire out of the official logo, the digit ‘7’ can be the fire wood, a camp with a door that looks like the digit ‘7’ and a window that looks like a bar code. Red color for the fire and I thought a green color is apt for the camp as it merges with the surrounding trees.
I need a tagline for the logo. Since I have pictured a camp fire and the Barcamp people are meeting to create new ideas or improving the existing ideas, the word ‘incubator’ appears to convey the right meaning.

This is my creation:

Did I win?

The selection was based on voting. The spirit was ‘let the best man win and all that!’ There were many logo submissions. I really liked three other logos submitted by some creative design wizards.

I didn’t win the contest.
If you voted for me or left a comment, thank you very much for your time!

Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Design date: 03-Sep-2008