This month I will focus on a few of the popular coffee company logos such as Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Lavazza among others. I am hoping to see if I can find some common themes across these logos.
The first and most important thing you will have to do is determine the keywords you are tuning your website for. The trick here is to determine what your potential users are likely to search for. Also remember, do not try and tune for generic keywords because there will be a ton of other sites who have already tuned for it. Lets take an example. Lets say you have an Indian Restaurant called Banjara Palace in Bangalore. The first instinct may be to tune for "Banjara Palace" or "Indian Restaurant". Anyone who already knows your name is not your target audience, although its important to tune for your name as well. Even if you get in the top list for Indian Restaurant, whats the point, someone in Japan who searches finds you will probably never come to Malleshwaram for lunch.
Do you own a website, blog, business related to India, then you can get a free listing in the Dinesh.com Indian web directory. This directory has over 5000 listings at this point and a lot of the sections show up in the rankings on Google.
To submit your site, navigate to the proper category and add your listing. The listing will be approved or rejected in about a week. If you site is not related to India or does not meet my standards, it will be rejected. If you find that your site needs a new category, please add it in the description and I will consider it.
Do not submit any "Work At Home" or "Money Making Related Sites"
Saab is a line of automobiles manufactured by Saab Automobile AB, and is currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of the General Motors Corporation. Originally, Saab AB was an aviation and defense company based in Sweden and founded in 1937 in Trollhättan. Its name was an acronym for "Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget" (translates to Swedish Aeroplane Limited), thus written as "SAAB". In 1939 Saab merged with the Linköping based ASJA and the headquarters moved to Linköping. During changes in company ownership in the 1990s, the company name became Saab AB.
The logo of this SAAB depicts a mythological bird which is also used on the official coat of arms of the Count von Skane. The symbol was used as the symbol for the Swedish province Skane, where the SAAB company was formed.
On October 2, 2009, Rio De Janeiro was awarded the right to hold the 2016 Summer Olympic games. The logo for the games shown alongside is in the shape of a Sugar Loaf. According to the winning designer, Ann Soter,"The Sugar Loaf in the shape of a heart represents the Brazilians' indisputable passion and vibration for sports. The exclamation point replacing the numeral 1 in the writing 'Rio 20!6' symbolizes Brazil's heightened expectations with the chance of hosting the event".
The distinctive shape of the Sugar Loaf is representative of the city's natural assets "cariocas" take so much pride in. The proposed logo is intended to depict the varied colors of Rio's exuberant nature. You can see from the picture of Rio below how the logo ties in with the landscape. The colors Yellow, Green and Blue are also the colors of the Brazilian flag. The logo was chosen from among 4 finalists.
The logo was unveiled Monday, Dec. 17, during the Brazil Olympic Award ceremony, held at Rio's Teatro Municipal.
Google announced the launch of Google Wave on September 30th, 2009. Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. Google Wave is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions.
I found the logo for Google Wave to be very well designed with the 4 primary Google colors - Blue, Red, Yellow and Green integrated to for a W representing a Wave. I am not sure if the 4 elements are also tied to the 4 platforms being merged - e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.
Overall, I like the logo a lot and it looks really professional and cool.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team located in Jacksonville, Florida. They are currently members of the South Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Jaguars, along with the Carolina Panthers, joined the NFL as an expansion team in 1995.
The Jaguars name was selected through a fan contest. Finalists for the name included the Sharks, Stingrays and even Panthers, but Jaguars was ultimately selected on December 6, 1991. The Jaguars logo featured a snarling jaguar head with a teal tongue, which Weaver said was his wife's touch. He also claimed that the teal tongue came from "feeding Panthers to our Jaguars" — an obvious jab at their expansion brethren.
The 2009 UEFA Women's Championship, or just Women's Euro 2009, is being played in Finland between August 23 and September 10, 2009. Twelve teams compete in the competition, increase of 4 teams from 8 teams that played in previous tournaments. The logo of the championship was unveiled in Feb 2008 and is shown alongside. The logo, which is a mix of bright yellow and orange is in the shape of a person with the head shaped as a ball. The colour palette usage, from light yellow to dark orange, encompasses passion, pride and a sense of a new dawn within the competition. At the same time, the heritage and prestigious past of this tournament is maintained via the use of the distinctive UEFA arch. Beneath the main graphic element and the tournament wording, the host country staging the finals is also referenced, in this case "FINLAND 2009".
The logo was created by The Works, the United Kingdom-based design and branding agency. UEFA also said that future UEFA European Women's Championship final rounds will utilise the same logo, although each time with a personalised brand design highlighting the features of the hosts.
The New England Patriots, commonly called the "Pats", are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area, playing their home games in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts. The team is part of the East Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The team changed its name from the original Boston Patriots after relocating the team to Foxborough in 1971, although Foxborough is a suburb of Boston, 22 miles (35 km) away. For the greater part of the 2000 decade, they have been quite the dominant team led by coach Bill Belichick and quarter-back Tom Brady.
The Patriots introduced their current logo in the 1993 season when the team underwent a major change in the uniform, colors and logo. The logo is a silhouette of a patriot with the primary colors of the US flag (Red, White and Blue) and a star on the hat. The Patriots logo is also known as the "Flying Elvis" to some because of its slight resemblance to Elvis Presley's long sideburns.
The Audi
badge the 'Four Rings' is the emblem of one of the oldest car
manufacturers in Germany. It symbolises the 1932 merger of the four
independent motor-vehicle manufacturers: Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer.
Together with the NSU brand, which joined in 1969, these companies are
the roots of the present-day AUDI AG. After the war the Audi name -
which is Latin for "Hear!" - disappeared, but was revived in 1965,
using the four rings as a logo. Also, the name is sort of a pun on
'hoerch', German for 'hear', name of one of the founders. The
company itself is more than a century old.
The new logo, released in September 2009 changes the font and also improves on the 3-dimensional aspect of the rings.
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. They compete in the AFC North Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Ravens have won one Super Bowl title, Super Bowl XXXV, in the 2000 season against the New York Giants.
The Ravens were chosen from a Baltimore Sun telephone poll in 1996, the name is borrowed from a well-known poem by Baltimore native Edgar Allen Poe. The Ravens logo consists of a mean looking Raven in the team colors of purple and gold with the letter B. The mean looking Raven fits well with the strength of the team - mean defense.
The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina, representing North Carolina and South Carolina in the National Football League. They are currently members of the South Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Panthers, along with the Jacksonville Jaguars, joined the NFL as expansion teams in 1995.
The Panthers logo as you see it is fairly clear and consists of the head of a black snarling panther outlined in blue. It is shaped to resemble the combined borders of North and South Carolina. According to article in the press, the name Panthers was picked by Mark Richardson, who is the son of owner Mark Richardson. He also suggested that the team colors be black, blue and silver.
With the Twitter craze hitting the world for the last few months, I thought I would dig in to see what the Bollywood stars are tweeting about and who the popular Bollywood Twits (is that what they are called in Twiterminology ;-)). To begin with all of Bollywood is not yet on Twitter though it has its fair share of celebrities on it. After some digging around and following their tweets, here is my opinion of the popular Bollywood stars on Twitter as of Aug 2009.
Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) - By far the most popular Bollywood celebrity on Twitter (no surprises there), Priyanka has about 38K followers and growing rapidly. She is a frequent tweeter, posting multiple tweets during the day. She keeps a good mix of personal opinions and about her ongoing projects and appearances. When she finds time, she does respond to her fans. I like how she manages herself on Twitter. Quite the role model I would say. Hum bhi Priyanka ke Bhakt hai.
Karan Johar (@kjohar25) - With about 11K followers, Karan Johar would come a distant second. Karan too is a regular poster and also keeps a good mix about his personal opinion and his work. You can see that he is tweeting himself. He just kicked off a project with SRK and Kajol.
Aamir Khan (@Aamir_khan) - For some reason, he does not have a great following on Twitter. Given his personal situation with the wife having a miscarriage, he is not very active on Twitter.
Riteishd (@Riteishd) - New to Twitter, Riteish (at school I was taught, i before an e, except after c..never mind) is getting a good following. Riteish too provides a regular update and replies to his fans. Generally funny too.
Genelia D'Souza - Probably the worst from the Bollywood list, she barely has any posts and anything that I have seen seems like it was to promote her appearance and not done by her.
Others who are regular are Lara Dutta, Dino Morea, Uday Chopra, Ram Gopal Varma, Ayesha Takia.
Notably missing from the Twiiter world are the Bachchan's (Amitabh, Abhishek and Aishwarya), the King (SRK).
Mazda Motor Corporation is a Japanese automotive manufacturer based in Hiroshima, Japan. It is said that Mazda coincides with the anglicized pronunciation of the founder's name, Jujiro Matsuda, who was interested in spirituality, and chose to rename the firm in honor of both his family and Zoroastrianism. The word Mazda derives from Ahura Mazda, the Avestan language name for a divinity exalted by the ancient Iranian prophet Zoroaster, as the source of wisdom, intelligence and harmony.
The current logo attempts to capture the spirit of Mazda, the stylised "M" evokes an image of wings in
flight and symbolises the Mazda’s flight toward the future. The "V" in the
centre of the "M" spreads out like an opening fan, representing the creativity,
vitalty, flexibilty and passion that is Mazda. The symbol as a whole expresses
the sharp, solid feeling that Mazda will be seeking in all of its products. The
dynamic circle symbolises our readiness to spread our wings as we enter the 21st
century.
