Logo design, logo designer | The Chip Shop Awards 2008

35 spot-on reader comments to “The Chip Shop Awards 2008”

1. Steve - Eightyone Design, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   Brilliant - Love the window cleaner one - very clever!

2. Peter Sullivan, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   I’m lovin’ the Ebay ad. Merging the old way of selling your stuff with the new. Brilliant.

   Peter Sullivan’s last blog post…Kickin’ It Ol’ School

3. Jennie, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   Can’t say I am that impressed with the Tourettes one, having tourettes myself I always find it misleading when people jump on the swearing band wagon as this campaign clearly has. Did you know only 1 in 10 people with Tourettes actually swear. Maybe someone could come up with a way of making that fact known through clever marketing. I shall put my thinking cap on!
   Nice article though David, I liked it. :)

   Jen

4. Jacob Cass, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   Hi David,
   Some very creative advertisments here… What am I missing in the #9 one though? Your readers will probably like the 192 Creative Advertisements post of mine also, very similar stuff.
   Thanks for letting us know of these, good timing because I am doing a design for advertising class at the moment.

   Jacob Cass’s last blog post…Just Creative Design Upgrades To Semi-Dedicated Hosting

5. Sherif, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   That looks so attractive David!

   Thanks for bringing such interesting news.

6. Andrew Kelsall, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   The Chip SHop Awards is a great site…I’ve never stumbled across it before. I especially like the advert for B&Q showed on their site. The eBay one’s great too. It’s amazing how sometimes the simplest solution is the most effective.

   Andrew Kelsall’s last blog post…Logo Design for J Smith Marine Consultancy Ltd

7. Niyaz, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   I liked the “Good Job” and “Anything and Everything” ads… very clever and funny too…

   Thanks for sharing David.

8. David P., on September 8th, 2008 said:

   Nicely presented post and it reminds me of the “hamburger in a can” ad campaign. I’m into logo design on the side… I’m keeping an eye on your site, thanks for the brilliant ideas, the “Flakey Baby” got me going. Cheers

9. Jonathan, on September 8th, 2008 said:

   Proof that sometimes the best ideas are the simplest!

   E45 Junior, KitKat, and Mac are all products, not clients. The Clients are Reckitt Benckiser (E45), Nestle (KitKat), and Apple (Mac). Oh and and the client for the Loseley Ice Cream product is Hill Station Ice Cream. Sorry, that’s being a bit pedantic!

10. Neil Martin, on September 8th, 2008 said:

    Everything about the CSAs appeals to me and I’ve only just heard of it! Perhaps it’s just me, but everything right down to their logo suggests that it’s supposed to be a lighter hearted, less serious (and more importantly - fun!) take on graphic design as opposed to the D&AD.

11. Jordan Joseph, on September 8th, 2008 said:

    David,

    I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now, and I must say your articles are always great and your logo designs are amazing…

    This being said PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE change your CSS to show some left padding on your sidebar links. Whenever I hover on your links I think ‘Dang, some left padding sure would look nice on this link’.

    /*Left padding in sidebar menus*/
    .sidebar1 ul li a{padding-left:10px;}
    .sidebar2 ul li a{padding-left:10px;}

    Thanks for giving me something to read though, your blog is much appreciated.

    Jordan Joseph’s last blog post…CSS Based Page Layouts

12. Jennie, on September 8th, 2008 said:

    Hi again - thought you might like to see my attempt at a tourettes message I made that I feel shows the real stats on TS and swearing… http://www.flickr.com/photos/11674076@N08/2841166652/

    Would love your thoughts on it…

    Jen

13. Mel Ndiweni, on September 9th, 2008 said:

    Window cleaner one is a real gem!

    Mel Ndiweni’s last blog post…Photoshop Adjustment Layer and Retouching Tutorial with Video

14. Danny, on September 9th, 2008 said:

    The window cleaner really did a good job~~I really can see it clearly~haha~

    Simplicity is the best way to express the idea.

    Thank for sharing this interesting and the best awards here.

15. Michael Martin, on September 9th, 2008 said:

    I hadn’t heard of these before, but I’m going to browse the site now. The jelly babies made me laugh! :D

    Michael Martin’s last blog post…Building a Wiki Empire

16. Steve O, on September 9th, 2008 said:

    Great find David, some awesomely simple design in there! Certainly had us chuckling and making appreciative comments in work.

17. cohnsey, on September 9th, 2008 said:

    I dont get the kit kat one. please explain

18. Jonathan, on September 10th, 2008 said:

    cohnsey - the KitKat slogan is “Have a break, have a KitKat”

    From Wikipedia:
    “Eduardo Alves da Silva (born 25 February 1983 in Rio de Janeiro), commonly known simply as Eduardo, is a Brazilian-born Croatian footballer currently playing for Arsenal in the English Premier League and the Croatia national team. He is currently in rehabilitation after suffering a compound fracture on his left fibula and a dislocated ankle in Arsenal’s match against Birmingham City on 23 February 2008.”

19. David Airey, on September 10th, 2008 said:
    Steve,

    Definitely the simple ideas that work best. I also love the window cleaner ad.

    Peter,

    You don’t often see a lot of whitespace on window ads, so the eBay one certainly stands out. Excellent. I agree.

    Jennie,

    Very interesting that as a Tourettes sufferer you aren’t keen on that particular ad. Thanks for leaving your take, which definitely gives the other side of the coin. Perhaps as very few people are familiar with the statistic you mention, the swearing route covers most bases? Still, I can appreciate that it misleads rather than educates.

    Jacob,

    Jonathan has kindly answered your question about the Eduardo ad. There are some other great ideas within the ‘best use of bad taste’ category.

    Sherif, Niyaz, Mel, David,

    Glad you enjoyed the ads too.

    Andrew,

    The B&Q ad is a fantastic example, even if it did take me a while to get it! :)

    Neil,

    The awards don’t seem to take themselves too seriously at all, even if very expertly organised. That’s another reason I was more than happy to feature them.

    Jonathan,

    I do appreciate your attention to detail, and actually wondered who the ice cream client was myself - the info was lifted from beneath each ad on the CSA website. Cheers buddy, and thanks also for offering more details about Eduardo’s leg break. I was watching the match when it happened, and felt for the guy.

    Jordan,

    Excellent! I’ve been meaning to address the padding issue for some time, but my CSS skills are lacking. That’s fantastic, and I’ll work on it shortly.

    Danny, Michael, Steve O,

    Glad you enjoyed them, guys. Cheers for letting me know.

20. Peter Sullivan, on September 10th, 2008 said:

    That’s very true. The white space really helps draw the eye to the eBay ad. It also helps that it is front and center.

    Peter Sullivan’s last blog post…What’s Your Perspective?

21. Jordan Joseph, on September 10th, 2008 said:

    The padding looks phenomenal. My suggestion of 10px would have definitely been too much. Well done, sir.

    Jordan Joseph’s last blog post…CSS Based Page Layouts

22. David Airey, on September 10th, 2008 said:
    Jordan,

    Thank you kindly, my good man.

23. Jonathan, on September 10th, 2008 said:

    Have to agree, insetting the links under the headings does offer a greater sense of hierarchy, so this looks just that bit stronger.

    I don’t know if it’s as a result of the changes you’ve just made, I can’t remember, but something that just isn’t playing right with the eye is that the left hand edge of the single pixel height ‘rules’ under the top navigation bar, your portrait photo, and the main headings are all inset by 10px due to a left/right margin of 10px on .sidebar1, ie, these elements don’t align with the left edge of the main navbar and top orange rule. This is the same for .sidebar2, the right hand sidebar. Eliminating the left/right margins on both these would create, I think, a stronger sense of alignment. It would also mean that you could open up the width of your main post div from 460px to 500px.

    Another small thing is that the top hairline rule under the navbar is black, yet the bottom hairline rule above the copyright message is light grey - I’m feeling like for consistency these should be the same colour?

24. David Airey, on September 11th, 2008 said:
    Jonathan,

    You’re spot on about the bottom hairline rule. It should have been changed to black when I altered the top lines. This has now been updated. Thanks a lot.

    You make a good point about the 10px margin. One reason I’ve kept them on the sidebars is due to a previous viewing on someone else’s computer (when I didn’t include the margins). My site content was sitting flush with the left of their browser due to the resolution, which at the time meant there was no padding between the edge of the screen and the text / images. I thought it wise to add extra white space, which helped, but perhaps now it’s obsolete?

25. Jonathan, on September 11th, 2008 said:

    I’m on a dualscreen res of 1960×1200+1280×800, but I’ve resized the browser to emulate 1024×768 (good old FireFox web developer tools), and in a maximised window with vertical scrollbar, there’s a good 25px either side of the grey navbar/thick orange rules. Less than 6% of web users use a screen resolution of less than 1024×768, so I think especially for your (design & professional oriented) audience, this would be considered an acceptable minimum.

    I think you’d be pretty safe removing the sidebar margins altogether to bring the left edge of the main headers level with the left edge of the navbar, or:

    Three major newssites I use on a regular basis (BBC News, Times Online, and Huffington Post), like your site use a fixed width, and have their main content on a white content wrapper background. However the main background outside the content area is a light grey, thus creating stronger edge lines.

    I’ve taken 4 screenshot examples to show how you could deal with this (again, good old FF Web Dev tools):

    Flush Headings with White background
    Inset Headings with navbar matching grey background
    Inset Headings with navbar contrasting grey background
    Inset Headings with navbar contrasting grey heading background

26. David Airey, on September 12th, 2008 said:
    Thanks very much for taking the time, Jonathan. That answers a few questions alright.

    My favourite of your four screenshots is definitely the first - flush headings with white background. My only reservation is the image width change. All my pictures, YouTube videos etc. are configured to 460px width, so to display them on a width of 500 would look a bit out of place. Maybe it’d be for the best though. Do you reckon? Thanks again. Your help’s much appreciated, and I’ll have to get familiar with the FF Web Dev tools!

27. firebubble - logo designer, on September 12th, 2008 said:

    My favorite is definitely Jim the Window Cleaner, that made me smile.Good work by the design company Lake. Think I will go check out their website now. Thank you for the post.

28. Jonathan, on September 13th, 2008 said:

    I think there’s probably a few ways you could proceed:

    1. Keep the middle post column/div at 460px, and just adjust the width of the sidebars/inter-column whitespace to compensate, thereby bringing the edges of the sidebars outward by 20px to align with the navbar, header and footer.
    2. Keeping the width of the post column constant at 460px, and the sidebar width/margins identical, but reduce the overall width of the rest of the site, ie, bringing the navbar, header and footer inward by 20px so that the navbar, header, footer edges align with the sidebar edges.
    3. Resize the post column/div to 500px & apply a CSS rule to centre all images inside the post divs, and create 500px width images going forward. Older posts would display the 460px images centred within the 500px column (although I don’t know if having centred images in the midst of flush left article text would is ideal either).

    I think your current line length of around 70 characters/12words is ideal from a readability perspective, so I would have thought that the first 2 solutions are easier and more elegant than the 3rd solution.

29. Ed Ashley, on September 13th, 2008 said:

    The window cleaner and ebay ads are truly brilliant… Lol.. I guess sometimes it’s not necessarily the ads with all the special effects that attracts attention… If you have a great concept even the simplest things like that win awards… Thank you so much for sharing!

30. Mark Cameron, on September 14th, 2008 said:

    Thanks for this David. I never knew the Chip Shop awards existed! Thanks again!

31. David Airey, on September 15th, 2008 said:
    firebubble, Ed, Mark,

    No worries at all.

    Jonathan,

    I agree. Options #1 and #2 are definitely more suitable, even if an increase in future image widths would be nice. I’ll see what I prefer when I have more time on my hands (still working on my new office space and home move). Thanks again.

32. Bryan Hoyt, on September 17th, 2008 said:

    David & Jonathan,

    I know this has gone slightly off-topic, so just quickly: while it’s true that most people browse with resolutions greater than 1024×768, that’s the screen resolution, not the actual canvas size. You still have to account for the (many) people who keep their sidebars open, or browse with un-maximized windows. But agreed, you’re probably still OK with the size of screens these days.

    I do like the look of this site.

    Jennie, interesting comments. I have to admit I thought the ad was very clever at first. Then after reading up on Tourette’s (which I knew little about), I discovered that it was a bit misleading, and was somewhat disappointed. Thanks for your view!

33. David Airey, on September 17th, 2008 said:
    Bryan,

    Thanks for adding to the ‘off topic’ design conversation. I appreciate your thoughts too, and it’s interesting to get your take.

34. Matt, on September 18th, 2008 said:

    I click on this without reading the intro properly and was disappointed at not finding recommendations for good chip shops, but actually this was much better!

35. miranon, on October 5th, 2008 said:

    Window cleaner is superb. Good work!

What are your thoughts?

Simply fill in the form below. All comments are moderated so you may experience a short delay before your comment appears. Comments should be respectful of other voices in the discussion. I reserve the right to edit or delete comments at my discretion.