My salad days of graphical dabbling focused on raster graphics.  I didn’t know anything else because that’s what PaintShop Pro emphasized.  Transparent GIF images were in vogue, mainly to show off gaudy background images.  I didn’t know any better when I designed the first website for the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.  You can see how enthusiastically I used background images.  Every human factors engineer should look back at his earlier work and learn from that experience.  Smack your forehead, shake your head, but always learn. 

The web evolved very quickly and with it graphics, how they’re created, and how they’re stored.  SVG is one of those formats, along with the open source tools used to create them.  For my update, I used Inkscape.  In total, the process is very similar to creating the raster version but with SVG it’s easier to dissect the process into a series of unions, intersections, or difference procedures.

I started with the basic ellipse shape and then added objects which would be used to parse the globe into its constituent pieces.

Object intersections and differences yield the final four parts of the globe.  These steps were very easy and took only a few minutes.  I spent a few minutes on alignment since the process of adding, removing, copying/pasting is rather disruptive.

The green hemisphere of the globe took a bit more work.  I’m still learning various techniques to ensure nodes intersect properly.  Nodes are the points that define a shape.  Paths, which are defined with a sequence of nodes, are harder to manipulate.  Like so many problems there are often multiple ways to get the same result.  Finally, adding a dash of color finishes the job.

What Works?

Like a movie critic watching a remake, I’m going to focus not on the content, but the presentation and delivery.  Essentially, it’s the same graphic.  Nothing new was added, nothing taken away.  The difference is in the detail.  I focused on precision.  Whereas the first iteration of the earth allowed the offset hemisphere to touch the globe, in this version I kept them separate.  The white space deserved equal clarity and now it’s got it.  The intention was never to make a true, three-dimensional logo.  It was to represent, in my original words “a clue that what’s outside the globe doesn’t represent everything that’s inside the globe.”

What Failed?

When faced with the chance to update a system or revamp an old design, software developers frequently encounter the second-system effect. In short, it’s the tendency to bloat a system with all the goodies and features that didn’t make it into the first deliverable.  My goal in doing this was to avoid such a failure.  I believe I succeeded.  So, what exactly failed?  Aren’t there always deficiencies in a design?  Perhaps I’ve reached a stage where this logo is precisely what I want and nothing more.  Adding ornate features are unnecessary but taking away anything fundamentally changes it and, in my opinion, would not succeed. 

The Earth graphic was a catalyst for even more artistic activity. Not only did I design the unsaturated.com logo around it, I decided to take it into three dimensions. But where does an artist find an affordable 3D editor? Bundled on a CD with his video card, that’s where. And what kind of quality should you expect from such an application? Not much.

After hours of adjusting primitive objects I had a new appreciation for 3D model editing. The 3D logo shaped up very nicely. With frequent file saves I lost little ground. Every aspect came together except for the gradient color shading. The 3D logo only has solid colors. Applying an image to the surface may have solved the problem. Instead, I changed directions and decided to animate it. What you see is the vision of my unsaturated.com studio trailer.

What Works?

The speed of rotation comes to a nice halt while the unsaturated.com text fades into the last frames. The scaling of the logo matches the original. However, this 3D model is more accurate than the original 2D version; the lines are sharper.

What Failed?

The gradient of the 3D model doesn’t match the original. The text was used on my web site in the past but now seems dated. There may be symmetry issues because I can’t recall any rulers on the editor that allowed me to space objects evenly.

This logo started as an experiment and quickly became a symbol of my website. I tried variations on the same theme but none showed the same spontaneity. The AT&T globe is probably the most recognizable sphere-based logo; it has staying power. There’s nothing complicated about it, which is how I prefer my website – uncomplicated.

What Works?

A slight gradient adds to the three-dimensional appearance. The offset hemisphere of the globe shows that not everything fits in but still conforms to the same shape. The tan color gives us a clue that what’s outside the globe doesn’t represent everything that’s inside the globe.

What Failed?

The separation between the hemispheres doesn’t flow well into the green segment – shadowing would probably help. The gradient starts light at the top left but doesn’t get darker towards the bottom right.