I have been really frustrated lately due to the fact that Sebastian and I have struggled to either find or create a logo for Global Geek Podcast. I have even considered buying a logo but it would not be an original and it would not be exactly what we wanted. Not to mention expensive for what you get. Then I found a great site called Mikons.
Mikons is another site based on a Web2.0 philosophy. That is users come together with a common purpose, to meet, interact, share and in this case create. With what is dubbed on the site as the “Mikon Machine” you can create your own logo’s, emoticons, or visual “tags” that are unique to you; the creator. The Mikon machine is in fact a Shockwave flash application that allows you to create vector graphics on a WYSIWYG interface. I actually do not know of any other website that offers such a service as this.
The editor also offers pre-designed pictures that you can put into your own design. Once you have created an account you can then save your design, edit it later, export them and share them with other people. If you want you to keep them all private you can do that too. The “machine” has absolutely heaps of options, such as copying images, resizing, resizing to scale, fill, custom shapes, group, hide, bring to front and many, many more. My only criticism would be that there are not enough fronts to choose from, there are only three at this point in time. I hope that there will be more in the future.
Having said that I actually exported my created Mikon, put it into Paint Shop Pro and add some of my own text and saved it in a different format. I also added colour to the logo that I have done for the Global Geek Podcast, and it looks awsome. But you will have to stay tuned for that one. The logo or Mikon that you see at the start of this post is as it was when I finished it on the site. A nice feature that is built in is the fact that all your original work is copyrighted for you being part of the site under a Creative Commons Licence. Nice touch.
There are some exciting things that you could use your Mikon for are endless in my opinion. I am thinking of things like an avitar, logo, mood message for your blog. Lots of things.
So please check out Mikons.com it is a very cool site and it is fun as well. I could not do it the justice that it deserves here so please check it out, in beta as usual with everything on the net these days so it can only get better. People have created some great mikons that you can download and use yourself if you are not too creative.
Note: This site is untested with “Site Advisor” that great Firefox extension that tells you if a site is nasty. That is that it is a grey site. But I did give it the thorough going over, there are no pop-ups or nasty code to worry about, I am sure that it will get the green light eventually. I have registered for the site and it comes highly recommended.
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