Logo Design Process and Walkthrough for Vivid Ways

I recently finished up a project with Scott McIntyre of Vivid Ways and Jon Phillip of Spyre Studios. My part in the project was to work on a new logo design for the Vivid Ways website and brand. Heres my design process and a walkthrough of how the final logo is created in Adobe Illustrator.

Vivid Ways is a new blog focusing on the topic of personal development and colourful living, it aims to inspire and encourage readers through ideas and tips on how to live an amazing life. After some initial correspondence with Scott and Jon via email we had fleshed out some thoughts on the style of the logo and what values would be presented through it. Examples of a previous design were supplied, and it was mentioned that the sans-serif font used was ideal. One other requirement was that the logo should use a separate graphic element along with the Vivid Ways wording. Otherwise, there was creative freedom surrounding the design which is always nice!

I started work sketching out my ideas for the logo, my main focus for the graphic of the logo was to display the letters V and W in a creative way that could be seen as an abstract mark, but also recognisable as the letters under closer inspection. After conducting a little research, it occurred to me that the ribbon is a widely recognised symbol of life, so I concentrated on drawing up a ribbon that flowed and twisted into the shapes of letters V and W. The two styles that stood out were the straight/folded effect and the smooth/curling version, both of which represented the same message but in different visual styles.

The logos graphic were then drawn up in Adobe Illustrator and experiments were conducted on the appropriate type styles. During the project commencement an example of a font was given, which I managed to identify asCentury Gothic. Being a standard Windows font, I decided to compare it to two classics with similar letterforms: Avant Garde and Futura. I was expecting to go ahead with Avant Garde, but when placed side by side Century Gothic actually looked the nicest. I felt the letter S of Avant Garde and Futura was way too thin for the logo.

Colour wise, blue was an appropriate choice with it representing mind, body, confidence and intelligence in colour theory. It was also used well in the website design mockup. Another idea for the colour of the logo was to take inspiration from the word vivid, and use a complete spectrum of colour. Combining both these colour concepts with subtle shading also helped boost the impact of the graphic with a three dimensional appearance.

Concepts were supplied to Scott and Jon and great feedback was received. Concept A with the smooth wave was the preferred graphic, but it was asked if it could be tried with the colouring and font choice of Concept B.

The final logo combines the strong waving graphic and vivid colour scheme and the smooth shapes of the typeface making for quite an impactful design.

Creating the Logo in Illustrator

With this background knowledge in mind, lets take a look at the technical side of the design and see what processes are used to create this graphic in Adobe Illustrator.

As previously mentioned, the logo started out as a bunch of sketches, these were developed on paper and the designs I was happy with were scanned in. In Adobe Illustrator the image was placed on a locked layer, the outline of one of the peaks was traced and taken to one side. It was important not to trace the sketch entirely because there wouldnt be any accuracy, instead the elements were laid out to specific measurements to ensure the logo would look good even at large sizes.

The peak outline was then copied and pasted, then moved to the side until the lines connected.

The paths were then edited with the Scissors Tool, and joined in specific places to make solid shapes out of each segment.

With the wave then being made up of individual shapes, Gradient colour fills could then be added. Blending any old colour samples just doesnt work the result is a muddy brown. Colours must be taken in their natural order in the spectrum (think rainbows or the colour wheel). The range started with blue, which faded to purple, to red, to orange, to yellow, to green and back to blue.

To give the three dimensional impression extra black was added to the areas of the ribbon that spiralled over, giving the impression that a soft shadow was being cast. This last touch is what really helps the graphic stand out.

The chosen font was also laid out. This was edited slightly by reducing the tracking and carefully kerning the letters to give equal spacing on either side. The gap between the words was closed up slightly to pull the words into more of a combined mark.

The logo graphic and type were then combined, the flowing line of the graphic seemed to fit quite well into the natural shape of the text when sat in a vertical layout.

The final logo was then developed into a few secondary variations such as being reversed out of a dark background, and reproduced using a single colour for use in specific circumstances.

This rendered the project complete, the logo files were zipped up and sent over by email. Overall a highly enjoyable project, it has been a pleasure working with Scott and Jon and Im looking forward to seeing the development of the Vivid Ways blog.

Logo Design Process Tutorial

February 28, 2009 | 50 Comments

Introduction
One of the main aspects of the branding process includes logo development. Your logo, or brand mark, in other words, needs to reflect your brand accurately, as it will play a huge role in your brand recognition. This however doesn't mean that the branding process ends when you've developed your logo, branding takes a lot of time, commitment, managing skills and finally, the ability to reflect the image you want others to have of you and your business This tutorial is intended to benefit both our potential clients, so they can have a fully comprehensive overview of our logo design process and methods; and many of our users, interested in the process of designing and developing a logo. For the purpose of this tutorial, we're going to design and develop a logo for an imaginary company, called "LTD", short from Logo Tutorial by DryIcons.

Project Start and design brief

The project starts when we receive a detailed design brief from our (imaginary) client. This is an important part of the designing process, because it will provide us with essential information about our client's insights, needs, expectations and targets. Understanding the nature of the project is beneficial for both designer and client, since it will save both parties a lot of valuable time (money) and will provide firm starting position which will result in a professional and effective product. Based on our client's information we now know that this is a strong, powerful, creative, responsible youth organization, which employs highly motivated, university educated staff. They are very passionate about what they believe in: individuality, democracy, creativity, non-conventional thinking, gutsy and dynamic attitude. Their target group consists of students, young professionals and independent entrepreneurs. They expect us to create an easily-recognizable, stylish graphic work, which will accurately express these characteristics.

Research
Research will mark the second stage of the design process. This stage means spending a lot of time browsing the Internet, initially doing research of the industry involved, getting to know our client's competition, current design trends and so on.

Visualization
Now this is the fun part. After we've gathered all the necessary knowledge, after a lot of reading and brainstorming, we are ready to start visualizing our ideas. Pencil drawing on a piece of paper is our favorite method when working on the initial concepts, however, this is just a matter of personal choice. Knowing when to stop and take a break has proven to be very helpful at this point. It's very easy to get stuck at a certain point, which will eventually lead to frustration and losing interest in the project. Leaving the project to rest for a while is always good, because when you get back to it, you are suddenly able to judge your work more objectively, and you instantly know which concept provides you solid ground for further development. After the break, we have chosen one idea that will be our main concept upon which we're going to develop the logo. We are going to use a stylized fist, a powerful symbol which will unite all aspects of this logo design project. Another method that's proved to be very helpful when visualizing your ideas is taking photos of your ideas, of course, when possible. With our desired symbol and perspective in mind, we have taken this photo:

Drawings

Based upon the photo image, we have drawn the fist. As you can see, highlighting the fist outlines can serve as a good starting point to developing this logo, but we are instantly going to abandon this idea because this is not the path we want to take.

Instead, we're looking to develop a modern, stylized, easily-recognizable symbol. Therefore, we're continuing to explore the fist drawing, now coming up with a more simple and stylized version.

The previous sketch has guided us in the right direction, and we now have a version of the fist drawing that's, in our opinion, very strong and memorable, but also very creative and modern.

Now we can move on to our computers.

Computer developing
Creating the Logo Mark
For the purpose of this tutorial we are going to use Adobe Illustrator CS3. From the Toolbar, choose the Rectangle Tool to draw a simple rectangle, like on the image below. With the rectangle selected, go to Effect > Stylize > Round Corners, and give the rectangle a semicircle roundness.

Now, copy and paste the same object. Click on the new object and slightly increase its height.

Repeat the same procedure to create all four fingers. Increase the object's height to resemble the different size of human fingers.

Copy and paste the smallest, pinky finger. The new object will represent the thumb. Place the thumb object accurately and rotate to the desired position.

Select all four finger objects and rotate to the desired position.

To be able to use the Trim Tool later, we need to expand the object appearance. Select all objects and go to Object > Expand Appearance.

To preserve the continuity of the design, we need to separate the thumb from the fingers that are touching. First we're going to create the thumb contour. The contour thickness needs to be the same as the spaces between the fingers. Select the thumb and go to Object > Path > Offset Path.

Creating the contour will automatically group the two objects together. To ungroup the contour from the thumb go to Object > Ungroup. Select the contour and change its color to have better articulacy.

We now want to trim the two fingers with the contour. Select the contour and while holding the Shift Key we'll select the two fingers we want to cut. Go to Window > Pathfinder to open the Pathfinder Window and click Trim.

Go to Object > Ungroup to separate the grouped objects, select the contour and delete it. This is the result of this procedure.

Applying the Company Name

Having our logo mark created, we now want to apply the company name. We think that the best way to do that would be to create another similar rounded object which will contain the name of the company. From the Toolbar, choose the Rectangle Tool and again draw a simple rectangle, like on the image below. With the rectangle selected, go to Effect > Stylize > Round Corners, and give the rectangle a semicircle roundness. We choose to color this object red, because this color provides good contract from the logo mark and bring more attention to the company name.

Choosing the right Typography

Choosing the right Typography is a very important part of the logo development process. The selection of font can depend on many things, like what look you are trying to convey, what's the font's purpose, how much space needs to be filled, and so on. Since our design uses rounded corners, and we don't want the company name to be distracted, we have decided to use a simple font with rounded corners, but without any complex details. For the purposes of this tutorial Im using a font called Arial Rounded.

Now, select the Type Tool, and type the word you need.

This is the final result. It's always best to provide your clients with vector files of the artwork, because vectors can be scaled to any size without loss of quality. On the image below you can see that we also created a grayscale and a black version of the logo. A good, strong logo shouldn't loose its impact in the black and white version.

Corporate identity
Having created a good logo is one thing. Using the logo to create a recognizable Corporate Identity is as important as everything we've done by now in this tutorial. In the image below you can see a great example of a consistent design and creativity and professional appeal.

Hope you liked our Logo Design and Process Tutorial. Please share your thoughts with us on this subject, do you share similar design methods, do you find this tutorial to be helpful? And make sure to come back for more.

Introduction
Last year, I was approached by a startup who required a logo in order to launch a business in the US. The WebMYnd team were 3 MIT and Cambridge University graduates who were very passionate about their product. They had acquired seed funding from ycombinator an outfit which picks enterprises to back and who have an excellent track record. WebMYnd have a product which is a plugin for your browser that turns your web browsing into an extension of your own memory. it allows you to keep a copy of everything you look at on the web, and then allows you to search actual page images and text when you need to remember something again.

The creative brief

The main aspect of their brief was to create an identity which would communicate the idea of collecting everything you look at on the web in one place and to inspire the idea of extending your memory. They wanted to make a tool that people would prefer to use in place of the old fashioned way of bookmarking and tagging websites. They also wanted the logo, or some element of it, as a button to indicate when the plugin was in use therefore colour was of great importance.

Getting started
Initially, I took the brief at face value and brainstormed some ideas. I wanted to create a concept using the initial from WebMYnd and the first concept which was produced as as follows. The simple lines created an abstract reference to a brain (an idea which the client had experimented with but did not like the appearance of a brain. This design captures the essence of a brain but at the same time forming a W.

This concept was discontinued however as the W was not clear enough and it did not have the presence that the client was looking to achieve. I therefore focused on colour and did some research for inspiration. I am a great fan of the works of Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian artist, printmaker and theorist. One of the most famous 20th century, Kandinsky has been credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Below is one of these works from which I took inspiration as to the colour palette which may suit the WebMYnd logo. The use of colour is broad yet it is not offensive on the eye and stands out enough to intrigue the audience. This is what I wanted to achieve so all I needed now was the correct design to show these colours.

Drafting and development

I consulted the client and the idea of creating a monogram using the W and the M was decided on to take the project forward. Below are my initial sketches.

The first of these above gave the best line to work with however I did not like the linear aspect as I would be unable to use enough variation of colour within a single lined image. Below are my developments of the first idea into a two dimensional concept and intersecting these shapes with differing elements to allow me to fill with colour.

After some re-drafting of one of the concepts, i decided on a wholly symmetrical design where the W mirrored the M therefore I transferred the design to the Dot Grid Book below. As the design had four elements which were identical in design, I was able to just concentrate on one element which could be copied and rotated at a later stage using the computer software.

Colours
Once the four elements were plotted and finalised, I looked at possible colours. Below are some combinations which I experimented with.

I finally decided on the colour scheme below using quite vibrant colours to create a presence but trying not to use garish tones which would offend the eye of the audience.

Final colour placement and concept presentation

I tried many combinations. When dealing wit the use of colour in this quantity, it is a case of trying until you find the right solution. Below is the finished design which was selected by the client.

Delivery and feedback

The client initially loved the concept and used it for a number of months however after some further discussion between themselves, they decided to choose a different design to move forward with however they still retain the rights to the design, should they wish to implement it in the future. I would like to thank the creators of WebMYnd and wish them every success for the future. It was a pleasure to work on this project and this design is one of the more popular with clients when they see my portfolio. Of course, I welcome any comments regarding this specific article or my design process in general. Thanks and enjoy!

Credits
This case study is written by David Pache. Want to submit your article to Web Designer Wall? Please contact me.

The problem is that step-by-step examples are rare. Why? Mainly because unless you are interested in sharing such information, there isn't much reason for recording it. And even if you

are, detailing the steps can get in the way of the process. If I'm ready to move to the next stage of an idea, I am normally not interested in recording what I've done to get there.

The good news is I rarely let normal get in my way. What follows are some of the steps I took to create a recent logo. I saved some of the graphics I created along the way and have attempted to recall a little bit about what I was thinking. There is, of course, more to a logo design process than what you see herethis exercise includes little about the typical ramp up of preliminary discussions, research, and so onspace, time, and vanity limit me to showing just a portion of the process. I don't know about you, but I start out on paper. I find it most productive to sketch out ideas in a notebook. A Moleskine notebook is my weapon of choiceits small and sturdy enough to carry in my back pocket. (I like them so much I sell the plain and horizontal-lined flavors in the ideabook.com store found the graph version shown here a little noisy for me.) I'm most concerned with concepts at this stagenot designs. To my way of thinking, designs emerge from concepts, concepts do not emerge from designs. My goal in creating a logo is, at best, to demonstrate the benefit of using the product or service and at minimum to create a visual symbol of the subject matter. I often show my clients those rough ideas. I have found that getting feedback on basic concepts is best for everyone involved. It allows us to weed out ideas that look good to me but don't work for the client. It acknowledges that the client knows the subject best, no matter how much research I do. What may appear to me to be a great solution to the problem sometimes just doesn't work for reasons I could not be expected to know. The logo I'll discuss here was designed for a helicopter transport companyMetro Aviation. I started by going through my sketches and choosing the concepts I thought had most merit. Step 1 (below) > I created some slightly tighter drawings of five of the ideasthe first, something to symbolize the basic rotor and lift dynamics.

Step 2 > Second is a helicopter with bird wings. Yes it's ugly (looks like a bat-copter)but we're just exploring concepts, not designs.

Step 3 > Next, a more realistic rendition of a copter integrated with the typeperhaps a flyover where the aircraft casts a shadow in the letter form.

Step 4 > From the outset, the client expressed an interest in using a hummingbird as a symbol for the helicopter so I began to explore that idea as well.

Step 5 > The problem with the hummingbird was that, as I began doing research, I found lots of other helicopter companies were using something similar as their mark.

Step 6 > That didn't rule it out, it just meant I would have develop the idea further to make it distinctive. To me, this version looks a bit more like its hovering.

Step 7 > But it was this design that made me think, I'm onto something,the combination of the hummingbird, the implied motion of hovering, and the additional visual element of rotation added the extra something I was looking for. My confidence was strengthened further when the client chose it from the lineup.

Step 8 > The rest, as they say, is history. The idea of the hovering bird stuck and I began to develop a design. First, I gathered together some photographs so that my actual design would reflect the correct proportions and positioning.

Step 9 > Research is crucial. If some aspect of your subject is inaccurate, you can waste amazing amounts of time pursuing a design your client will reject out of hand. In this case, you can see how different the beginning shape of the actual artwork (right) is from my original sketch (left).

Step 10 > The problem with logo design is you have to create finished art or something close to it to communicate your idea. I may tweak it after I get the client's okay, but I've got to be 95 percent finished with the art to sell it to the client. My software of choice is Adobe Illustrator. Here, I started by roughing out the body.

Step 11 > I created the feathers using a series of ovals.

Step 12 > Then I rotated the body and wing into hovering position.

Step 13 > You have to mine a lot of rocks to find the gold. This is one of many ideas I experimented with in my attempt to show rotation. Really awful isn't it?

Step 14 > What seemed to work best was to use some type of oval to simulate the blur of the blades.

Step 15 > Even better was a swirl. I took this clip art element...

Step 16 > and scaled it down vertically. Then I tilted the bird's body back to a vertical position so I was sure to get it centered correctly. What follows are variations of this basic design.

Step 17 > First, I added color and used the top of the swirl to define the division between the bird's body and its head. I also added a slight gap between the bottom of the swirl and the tail to accentuate the division between the swirl and the body. Finally, I added another oval below to act as a shadow.

Step 18 > Dividing the swirl into two colors helped to further accentuate the swirling motion.

Step 19 > I tried adding another shape as if the swirl were casting a shadow on the lower body. It works, but I thought it was getting a little too complex.

Step 20 > And I tried changing the black swirl to gray.

Step 21> This version includes a couple of light gray shapes I thought might give the image a little more of a sense of movementnope.

Step 22 > I finally settled on filling in the spaces between the bird's body and the swirl. My thinking was to simplify the final version as much as possible and, for me, removing the negative space helped.

Step 23 > I was actually really happy with this basic design. I even went so far as to work it into a business card layout using the colors the client requested.

Step 24 > But here comes a reality check. The client decided the idea of hovering just wasn't convincing enough. He liked the design but thought the hovering motion would be more true to form if it was above the body as it would be on a helicopter. Wow. Its always difficult to hear when a client isn't as excited about your solution as you are. But I can tell you the axiom the customer is always right is always true. At least if you want to stay in business.

I could spend the time necessary to provide the client with carefully considered, well-spoken reasons for going with what I created, but clients are no different than designers if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for youperiod. Step 25 > So back to the drawing board. How do I glue these pieces together in a way that works?

Step 26 > First, I had to re-think the wings. The swirl took the place of the wings so I had to get them back in there.

Step 27 > That worked for me, but the swirl didn't.

Step 28 > I needed something simpler. A solid shape? Nope too massive.

Step 29 > Again, I found simpler better. It worked for me and, more importantly, it was just what the client wanted.

Step 30 > Next, I adjusted the colors to match the helicopter color scheme (blue and yellow) and added the shadow.

Step 31 > The final hurdle was the tail. We tried several different versions. One...

Step 32 > Two...

Step 33 > Three...

Step 34 > and four...

Step 35 > I like it when clients push. Though I may cry and moan to myself at the time, more often than not, we end up with a better solution. That said, in this case, I personally prefer the interim solution, but then I'm not paying the bill.

Logo design is legalized gambling. When I take on a project I don't know if it will take eight hours or five days. In fact what I've shown you here is the tip of the iceberg. To the right, in PDF form, is a summary of some of the many iterations of the logo. Though it is a challenge from all sides, there is nothing quite so exciting for a designer than discovering, developing, and implementing an image that becomes the visual representation of an entire organization.

You've strategically hit the battle platform and logo & icon design portfolio & design blog of UK based logo design pioneer, and gun-for-hire, Graham Smiththe original Logo Smith since '86.

View more Mono Marks. Mono Marks A mini-slideshow displaying existing logo design marks taken from my logo design portfolio: each one proudly presented, on their own, in solid black-on-grey.

Get Projects Done FasterEnjoy Higher Collaboration leading to Faster Project Completion with Zoho Advertising via Ad Packs

Logo Process JoomlaBamboo Identity Development

UWritten by Graham Smith: @imjustcreativethe original Logo Smith since '86. tShare Post On Twitter

The Brief
A relatively simple brief for this logo project. Right from the beginning I was able to get a handle on what the client wanted pretty instinctively. This logo is for a website, specializing in minimal Jooomla templates, so the minimal bit was a pretty good clue. It was one of those jobs where the client almost didnt need a brief. Just pointed me to some previous site designs and say, go for it. It was for all intense and purposes, full artistic license. Woot.

The Initial Thoughts

Something very clean, minimal yes, but also in tune with the other obvious association, bamboo. The client himself is a experienced web developer, so with his previous template designs, I was able to get a very good feel for the style required. Nice when this sort of project comes along, as they are pretty painless and just seem to flow.

Check the competition

One of my few concerns was the clich association of bamboo. I Googled bamboo logos and was not overly surprised to see a fair few bamboo orientated designs. Many focusing on the iconic element of bamboo. This I desperately wanted to avoid, yet, you cant totally ignore it given its a fundamental part of the company name. Also, given the prolific nature of bamboo logos many variations and styles exist, so being totally original can be tricky. Being totally different for the sake of it can have complications with brand associations.

The logomark
This proved to be a little more tricky, just because I had the overwhelming stench of clich stuffing up my senses. In order to try to be as novel as possible, I referred back to the Google search of existing bamboo style logos and took a good look around.

This proved to be very helpful as I was able to sketch a few simple ideas that seemed to do the trick. Very simple shapes at the end of the day, bold and clean. And of course not overpowering in anyway, so thus avoiding the stench of clich nausea. In the end it did not take too long to find the right one, a few ideas then it just seemed to work. So rather than fiddle and tweak for the sake of it, decided to leave it. The test was putting it along side the wording and finding a position that worked, left, right, top, middle etc. The far right option was the least obvious option I felt, another method to distance myself from any clich association. But also, it meant it was able to ride next to the word bamboo, so this felt right. At the beginning I did play with some Joomla orientated marks, tried a few variations but almost felt more clich than the bamboo. The bamboo part is what distinguishes the brand over other Joomla designers, so this was the reason I left the Joomla association alone. Not to mention the Joomla logo is not a pretty thing. :)

Fonts
First step then, as usual for me is locating some suitable font choices. Fortunately for me, I had seen the perfect font just a few weeks ago. The font in question is called Dispose fromTypeTrust. I had not yet purchased it, but decided this would be the font. To me it instantly felt right, created the perfect mental image in my head. Think of bamboo and this font seemed the logical choice.

Yes, it was a reasonable purchase in terms of cost, I purchased the whole family, but it was a no brainer for me to buy. It was a significant asset to the overall design. Well worth the investment. And given the cost of some font families, the $150 actually seemed like a real bargain.

The Result
In keeping with most of my logo designs, this logo works in any combination of colours and backgrounds, from single colour to reversed out, gray scale etc. It is just as vivid white on black background as it is black on white background. This keeps the logo focused on delivering the message, not just the brand name but also helps clarify the nature of the brand itself, clean and minimal Joomla web site designs. It was a fun project to work on, and thankfully, I was able to get over my deep disdain for anything overly clich.

The finished logo in context

The following image is the final logo design in place on the JoomlaBamboo website. This version shows how well the all white version works, relying on the background colour to highlight the logo.

Website : http://joomlabamboo.com Twitter : @joomlabamboo

Testimonial

Usually when two designers get together you can expect a little conflict in terms of design direction, but working with Graham was incredibly seamless. I had a good idea of what I wanted for the redesign of the Joomla Bamboo logo but Graham made it infinitely better. The final product shows his impeccable knowledge and sensitivity to typefaces he ended up combining two while the logo highlights his flare for creating minimal and yet powerful vector logos that help to convey the core essence of your business in a seemingly effortless way.

Logo design for Social Signal

POSTED BY GEERT LEYSEELE

26

MARCH2009

Social Signal is a web strategy company that helps business, non-profit and government clients use the latest web tools to engage their customers, supporters and the general public in crucial conversations.

The logo design brief

Design is a collaborative process between the designer and the client so the first stage of the process is always trying to understand the nature of the client's business. Social Signal is a web strategy company that helps business, non-profit and government clients use the latest web tools to engage their customers, supporters and the general public in crucial conversations.

We want the logo to evoke:

Our emphasis on both the human and the technological (were a tech company, but were a tech company whose expertise is understanding people) Creativity, fun, artistic expression A sense of innovation, intellect Hopefulness for the future

Look and feel

We probably want a symbol and accompanying text treatment.

Research, thinking process, and sketches

Before we start anything else we do some research in books, web etc. Research is an essential part in the logo design process as this ensures that your logo will differ from competitors for example. We know about competitors because it is one of the questions we ask in our questionnaire. The next stage in this design process is where creativity comes into play and usually the most fun part, namely the sketching cycle. Veerle concentrated in this stage on the 'signal' part.

Proposal 1
The people factor and wavy shape of a signal coming from the 2 is in the name as sort of antenna sending out a signal. The colors symbolize the diversity of people.

Proposal 2
Basically the same idea as logo 1, but a bit more abstract. People socializing, expressing the intersection of social media The bigger cluster of dots could be the signal-to-noise expression, with the i being the signal factor and the bigger dots the noise.

Proposal 3
Here I worked with the signal idea like the initial logo, but with a typographical twist and dept effect.

Client feedback
Great work! We were so excited to see these, and have had a lively morning conferring with the team. All of us liked different aspects of each of the three designs, but we all agreed that version 1the people-as-wave-formwas our favorite, and a very strong representation of both the social/community and tech/communications dimensions of our work. We did have several thoughts about the current version, and some elements that we liked about the alternative options that wed love to try incorporating. Wed love to see two or three takes on the first logo that could show some different possibilities.

Proposal 4
Before arriving at the final logo Veerle tried another comp but this time without the rainbow of colors.

Client liked proposal 4, but with the rainbow colors instead of the yellow-red range. This version was used as the basis for the final logo.

Final logo
However Veerle tweaked a few more things before it was finally approved. This is what Veerle did to get to the end point:

Ive adjusted the colors a bit and went back to the rainbow colors. I think the yellow should stay in place because it creates the perfect contrast with the red. I had to create an extra bright red and an orange-red to make it work. So the green, blue violet stays as it is and there are more warm color variations or steps from red to yellow than there is from yellow to violet. I also tweaked the kerning of the letters a bit and altered the shape of the letter 'g' to achieve a perfect vertical aligning between the 'a' and the 'g' and the 'n' and the 'l'.

That was the current logo. So the keywords from my little brainstorm were:

Loop Collage Avant-garde

Logo References and Sketches

Before going straight to the computer, I worked on some sketches, exploring a few concepts using the keywords that were selected before. Also I visit logopond.com for some logo references. You can take a look

at some logos I used for reference at the Ultimate One Color Logos Inspiration article.

Logos from logopond for design references The first idea was to keep the # symbol and add another element. In this case the lightning bolt.

I know, I suck at that but it's helpful ;)

First Idea
After having some interesting ideas on paper, it was time to go to Illustrator and work on the symbols. Below you can see one of my ideas, mixing the # and the lightning bolt.

The first symbol mixing the # with the lightning bolt It was a nice idea and a good symbol in my humble opinion. It had a nice link with the previous logo, but there was a big problem: the number 9 wouldn't work well along with that symbol.

First Idea with the Logotype and versions

Selected Idea
Even though the first version came out quite nicely, I decided to work on another version, trying something different and using the number 9. With that in mind, I decided to mix the number and the lightning bolt symbol.

Second idea mixing the number 9 and the lightning bolt

Logotype
With the Avant-garde influence on the song Revolution #9, I simply had to use that font. I really like it, despite the fact that here in Brazil it was a default font in Corel Draw, the most popular software for vector design here. But what does that have to do with the font? Well, imagine that this is the default font... so when people send business cards to the bureau and forget to send the fonts, which one is used instead? Yes, maybe it was the most used font ever here in Brazil, but with a few tweaks it would work fine. Exploring the idea of looping, I played with some characters, mainly in the word Brain because ideas and complex thoughts are born in the brain, so it had to have a clear relation between LOOPING in the Brain.Also I used gradients to add some depth to the connections between the letters. In the last letter, the "M", I nudged the symbol a bit over the letter, leaving a little gap between the symbol and the letters to avoid problems with the monochromatic version.

Selecting and playting with fonts

Final Result
I really believe that the new logo achieved the goals we had set in the very beginning of the project. A simple and iconic logo, relating to the Beatles song, Revolution #9.

Versions

Braincast

Braincast, the Brainstorm #9 screencast.

Site
Also I worked on the web site, but that's another story for perhaps another post in the future.