DESIGN / Packaging / Lucky Strike Cigarettes

Lucky Strike is a famous brand of American cigarettes, often referred to as 'Luckies'.

Although I'm not a smoker myself (Lucky Strike is a brand favoured by my boyfriend) I do find the logo design and layout used on the packaging very attractive. Apparently Ray Johnson, a Pop-era artist, was also keen on the logo, it became a prominent fixture in his collages (for example, James Dean (Lucky Strike), Ray Johnson, 1957). The Lucky Strike logo was designed by Raymond Loewy, an industrial designer who also created the logos for Exxon, Shell, AT&T and Coca Cola.

The logo itself is very simple, consisting of just four concentric circles of four colours - red, white, green and black. The concentric cirles work to focus our attention and emphasise the brand name "Lucky Strike", and the brands slogan "It's Toasted". The circles are also suggestive of a lit cigarette viewed end-on. I'm sure it is also relevant to the brand that circles are symbolic of infinity, protection and security.

The font used on the Lucky Strike logo is FuturaBT-ExtraBlackCondensed Bold, slightly modified.

Source : Lucky Strike, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Strikes

Google's Tetris Logo

Google are well-known for redesiging their logo to commemorate special calendar dates or anniversaries. All Google's logos are very well-designed but I think their Tetris inspired logo (displayed today, June 6th 2009) is possibly my favourite so far!

This Google logo has been designed especially to mark the 25th anniversary of classic computer game 'Tetris'. Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov. It was released on June 6, 1984.

DESIGN : Flip Clock Screensaver, "Fliqlo"

I love vintage flip clocks! I can remember gazing up at one particular flip clock as a little girl when my dad would take me to the building society. I was fascinated by the apparent simplicity of the technology, the bound and determined moving parts, and the loud clicks as the numbers snapped precisely into place.

I don't own one myself just yet, so instead I make do with this digital version - "Fliqlo". Fliqlo is a free screensaver for Windows or Macs which imitates a flip clock. The time can be customised to display in 12-hour or 24-hour formats. You can also customise the zoom using the up and down arrow keys.

My only complaint is that it does not 'click' - oh well, I guess you can't have everything!

Download Fliqlo for free!