Starbucks has a remarkable logo. Cheers to Doug Fast - The designer of the latest green Starbucks logo :).

After some research, I came to this site, http://www.deadprogrammer.com/starbucks-logo-mermaid, and found it comprehensive about Starbucks logo. Here’s the brief of the evolution of Starbucks logo:

There’s a chapter about Sirens in the book called A Dictionary of Symbols by J.E. Cirlot. The woman-graphic in the center of Starbucks logo was believed originated from the mythological half-women, typically called Siren (with the half-bird/half-woman and the half-fish/half-woman varieties). The half-fish type normally called Mermaids. Wise mythologists came up with an answer that it is a two-tailed mermaid sometimes called a Melusine.

The original brown cigar band-shaped Starbucks logo had an slightly altered Siren from that book. The belly button and the unattractive shading around the bulging tummy were removed and the tail-legs was merged. The new Siren also smiles a little compared to the 15th century one.

This is the original “cigar band” logo.

New “cigar band” logo with the nipples covered up:

Next, here’s the more familiar stylized green Starbucks logo.

The current logo, with the Siren image cropped, only showing a hint of the tails.

This is the new supporting graphic of Siren image with only one tail. It was used as part of store decoration and product packaging.

Below is one of the latest coffee bags that re-imagines the siren in a modern and attractive way.

Flash was originally created as a vector animation software. Over releases of new versions of Flash, Macromedia has made it more powerful and developer friendly. With the presence of ActionScript, Flash has grown to more than a simple tool for vector drawing or computer graphic design. Since then, Flash is widely used in various platforms such as website, presentation, CDROM/ DVDROM, etc. After taken over by Adobe, with the release of Adobe Flash CS3, which is the first version of Flash released under Adobe name, Flash has gained better integration with other Adobe softwares like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Flash is a powerful tool and it make the world of web more interesting. However, problems occured when Flash developers abuse the technology of Flash:

1. Flash movies can be made to load faster, but we could notice that most of the time, they are not built in that way due to the Flash developers’ fanatic on heavy and fancy Flash. This is against website’s fundamental concept. Always consider about the loading time and usability.
2. If a web page consists of HTML and Flash content, the Flash should serve it’s own role only and shouldn’t distract the site’s core value. For instance, you have Flash ad banners that plays distracting animation with sound and so, while the main purpose of your web page is to encourage member registration. You might gain some advertising fee from the banner but lose some members for that. Not worth it, isn’t it?
3. From time to time, Flash has newer and newer versions released. However, it doesn’t mean you must always export your Flash movie in latest version. Not every web user has latest version of Flash player installed in their computer.

When to use Flash in your website? Why use Flash?

1. There are times you need to create complex animation which is impossible to be done using HTML. This is where Flash comes in to help you design nice animation.
2. If you need to display a short video in your site, Flash is the latest trend for your web users to stream the video.
3. Flash movie has no problem as “browser compatibility issue”, generally. You view a Flash movie the same way, no matter which browser you’re using, IE, Firefox or Netscape.
4. If page ranking for your website is not that important, it’s “ok” to have a full Flash site. Since Flash content are mainly graphic, robots of search engines are not able to capture the content and index it.

Flash is to enhance a website, not to downgrade it and keep your visitor away. We adore Flash, but use it smartly. Do you Flash abuse?

If your design sells well, do you get extra?