Rohdesign Weblog: Logos

Here you'll find all posts file under the Logos category.

April 28, 2008

Web414 Stickers

Recently, I was invited to try PSPrint printing, by marketing manager Trisha.

For a while I've wanted to create stickers for Web414, the local Milwaukee web design and development group I'm part of, so I sent some EPS art to PSPrint.

A week later, I received a package of 50 white stickers with a 2 color Web414 logo on them, and they look great!

The stickers were designed at business card size: 3.5" x 2" then trimmed above and below the logo. Using my wife's corner rounder from her scrap-booking toolkit, I rounded the corners to complete the look I was aiming for.

I could have gone with a custom die, but since this was a free test run, it wasn't in the budget. If I were running a large quantity, I'd most definitely order a die.

Sticker Quality
PSPrint uses a medium weight vinyl for their stickers, printing the logo in 4/color fade-resistant inks with a 6 months fade-free guarantee, under normal use.

The substrate is tough and resilient, though these are not intended for extreme situations. For heavy duty stickers, check out StickerRobot.com.

Still, for placement on a laptop, notebook or other medium duty applications, I'm very pleased with the results of the PSPrint stickers created for Web414.

Come to the Web414 May meeting and get one free 'til they're gone!

Related Links
Flickr Photos: Squared, Rounded, and shown In Context with a Moleskine.

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February 5, 2008

Winterblast 2008 T-Shirt Design

For the past several years, I've had the great opportunity to design t-shirt graphics for Winterblast, our church youth group's annual winter retreat.

For 2007, I created a snow monster for the shirt design, and loved how the white ink on navy blue long-sleeve t-shirts turned out. For 2008, I chose a stylized white polar bear design, on forest green long-sleeve t-shirts.

Designing the Polar Bear
To create the stylized polar bear illustration, I used image searches to locate a few reference photos, to help me establish correct proportions and shapes in my memory. Using this reference, I created a front-view polar bear in Adobe Illustrator. No sketches were necessary, as the bear idea had formed in my head by this point.

After several design iterations, I decided to add a pair of black 1960s sunglasses, a winter cap, and enclosed the polar bear within a circular shape.

I explored various type treatments for Winterblast '08, settling on a combo of Helvetica Bold and Medium. The rounded rectangle shape around the type suggests a highway sign — as our group typically has a long road trip North to the retreat.

Printing the Shirts
Once the art was complete, I took my final files to MJM Screen Print & Embroidery Studio in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. MJM provided great screen printing and superb service, turning these Winterblast t-shirts around quickly, and with great quality.

Here are a few photos of the finished t-shirts:

I think these shirts turned out very well. I can't wait to pass these bad boys out to the 50 students and leaders going to Winterblast 2008!

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August 27, 2007

ProBlogger Logo Design

At the end of May, Darren Rowse contacted me through MakaluMedia, to redesign the ProBlogger logo.

Darren has one of the net's most popular blogs, and is one of the founders of b5media. I was honored to have a chance at designing the new identity, so I agreed to come on board the design team with Darren's site designer, Ben Bleikamp.

Darren's story is interesting, not only because he turned blogging from a hobby into a full-time career and business, but because he freely shares what he's learned from blogging. I quite like Darren's attitude of helping others grow and succeed by sharing his knowledge.

In this post, I'll share details and sketches on the new ProBlogger identity.

Initial Specs and Feedback
Darren answered my standard list of questions, and from his initial feedback I gathered several themes to embrace and portray with the new ProBlogger identity. He wanted ProBlogger to be:

A welcoming community where bloggers can learn and grow
A source of information on making income from a blog
A site promoting professionalism in blogging
An extensive blogging reference
Keywords: income, professionalism, community, inspiration, credibility, encouraging

Darren wanted a clean, crisp, contemporary, professional logo, without superfical "Web 2.0" stylings. He wanted a logo to represent himself and his blog, in a design that wouldn't go out of style in 6 months.

Sketches v1
With all of this information in mind, I began sketching multiple concepts to get the project rolling (click the image to see the v1 sketches).

With all of my logo projects, I like to loosen up with pencil in my Miquelrius notebook, freeing my mind to explore ideas. Note the keywords on the upper right of the page, which help guide me in idea generation during this first sketch phase.

I focused on theProBlogger P, as it portrays the brand well, and would be a consistent element from the original design. I explored one other idea (8) which suggested community as a nucleus with network connections and multiple outer atoms.

In Darren's feedback, I learned that he liked the emphasis on the P. He preferred the squarer P characters, as these leaned away from the "surf" look and feel he saw in ideas 17, 18 and 19. He also liked the community concept he saw in 8, so it was on to v2 sketches to explore those ideas a bit more.

Sketches v2
I this set, I explored the winning concepts and a few others, bringing in aspects of idea 8 and the community "atomic" ideas merged with the P character.

After review, Darren and his team of trusted advisers focused on two ideas from this v2 set: concepts 19 and 23. Next up was the black & white and color phase.

Black & White and Color Concepts
Because Darren was on a tight timeline, I changed my normal process, including both black & white and color logos on the same mockups. This way Darren could see the B&W ideas and some explorations of initial colors.

Concepts v1:
In the first set you'll see I came up with ideas based on the v2 sketches (2, 3, 4 and 5), along with a new idea (1) which came out I worked with the logos. Sometimes this happens, and I've learned to go with the flow and include these as options:

Darren's feedback from round 1 aimed us at the P within a nucleus circle with orbiting atoms around this central icon to embed the concept of comminity into the mark. While the more graphical representations of this community were interesting (1, 2 and 3), the clearer P emerged as Darren's top choice.

Concepts v2:
Based on feedback from v1, I narrowed to the single P with orbiting atoms, exploring different ways the atoms could be positioned, the connection between atoms and the outer ring, a font option and variations on the provided color pallette:

Concepts v3:
Darren really liked the color combo in ideas 7 and 8 in this set, leaning toward 7 a bit more. He wanted to keep the "P" and "BLOGGER" in orange and do one final exploration on atom position and separation between the atom and the outer ring. So I did a final v3 to help Darren see the 3 final options:

In the final version, I felt the leading atom suggested forward movement, and the separation of the atoms from the circle provided focus to the 3 atoms. 7.1 was chosen as the final winner:

Conclusion
Darren was pleased with the final logo, which was subsequently included in Ben's redesign of the site. It was great fun to see the logo announced on Darren's blog, followed by the release of the new site design.

As one might expect, with a major change on a popular site, there were a few who liked the old design better. However, after reading comments on the site related to the new logo and design, a majority of Darren's readers really loved the new site design and logo. Most importantly, Darren was pleased with the results.

Thanks Darren for choosing to work with me and MakaluMedia on the logo design. It was an honor and a pleasure working with Darren and Ben on this project.

Related Links
A New Look for ProBlogger - Coming Soon (Very Soon) (ProBlogger)
New Design Update (ProBlogger)
We’re Entering New Design Transition Phase (ProBlogger)
ProBlogger Redesign - Bedding Down for the Night (ProBlogger)
Redesign of Problogger.net - Designer Tells All (ProBlogger)
Redesign of Problogger.net (Ben Bleikamp)

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June 5, 2007

Paul Stamatiou's Logo Design Project

I've just completed a logo design project with tech guru, and fellow 9rules blogger, Paul Stamatiou.

Paul writes commentary and reviews on varied topics with a focus on technology, and has very high visibility on the web. So as you can imagine, I found it a fun challenge to work with Paul.

Below are links to the set of mockups and final art at Paul's Flickr account:

Paul Stamatiou Logo Design Set
Paul Stamatiou Final Logo Design Spec Sheet

It was fun, and different working with Paul, since he put all of the sketches, black and white and color mockups I did for him on Flickr — as they were delivered — and opened them up for public comments. I've not had that kind of in-progress, public critique done with my work before. Paul and the commenters liked the work and through the normal process, Paul selected a final winner.

One advantage to having your client post in-progress to final work posted on Flickr is, prospective clients can see the process, how it works and looks — which hopefully sends them to me and MakaluMedia for their identity design.

All in all, it was a blast working with Paul. I think we've found a clean, crisp and memorable mark for Paul to use as personal branding, on the blog and for other things, which makes me very happy.

Thanks for choosing to work with me Paul! :-)

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June 1, 2007

Panoramio (and logo) are acquired by Google

Congratulations to my friends Eduardo, Joaquín and José of Panoramio, in the recent Google acquisition of their startup!

From the Panoramio blog post on May 31st:

The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence. We have tightened our relationship with Google Earth more and more in recent months, and at the end we decided to walk one step further. After so much work together, honestly, we couldn’t imagine a better scenario than selling Panoramio to Google.

I was honored to work with "the boyz" back in October 2005, when we created the Panoramio identity (along with two other identities after it, including Cursoo).

I'm very excited for the Panoramio team, and just as excited that the identity work for the project had a small part in helping the team get to the next level.

Congratulations guys! :-)

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May 22, 2007

Design Portfolio Sets on Flickr

Busy, busy busy!

It's a busy spring here, working on all sorts of design goodies for clients at MakaluMedia. Because of this, I've had limited time to write up detailed logo design articles, like the ones I've done for Red 66, BOWN and cgi Interactive.

In March, I finally bought a Flickr Pro account. Why did I wait so long? I'm loving the ability to create and manage sets of images — It's been well worth the $24.95/year.

I've wasted no time, creating several sets of design work. Sets are a great way to gather similar works in one location on Flickr. Here are links to the sets:

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Logo Design — A sampling of logos created over the past several years.

Icon Design — Several samples of Mac OS X and other icon design projects.

Web Design — Screenshots from mockups and final pages of web design work.

Print Design — A sampling of print design projects I've worked on.

T-Shirt Design — T-Shirt design samples, including the Espresso Powered line.

Sketchtoons — A comprehensive sampling of scanned sketchtoons.

Hopefully this little public service announcement will make it easier for readers and visitors to check out the work I love doing every single day. :-)

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February 7, 2007

Red 66 Logo Design

In mid-2006, Carlos Granier-Phelps contacted me at MakaluMedia, about designing a new logo for Red 66, his consulting business focusing on Web 2.0, usability, Internet video technologies, digital security, ratings analysis software for TV stations, and web/tech consulting for movies & TV.

I worked with Carlos to gather my standard information package his company structure and outward image goals, his likes, dislikes in color and design and other tidbits that would give me insight in the sketch stage of the project.

Carlos wanted the logo to embody many different aspects of his personality and his business, including: hip, clean, dynamic, safe, fun, global, innovative, and high-tech. Quite a challenge, but I felt confident that by working with Carlos through the normal sketch to final process, we would find the right solution.

Sketches
First, I brought out the trusty Miquelrius sketchbook and pencil, and began capturing ideas as they came to mind, after reading Carlos' notes. Below I've posted thumbnails of complete sketches and artwork: click each image to see a full version:

Here you can see I explored a wide variety of ideas, playing with the interesting shapes created by dual 6s. I felt drawn to circular shapes enclosing or working with "66", as 6s are organic and round.

Carlos quite liked idea 27, since it seemed to capture Route 66, which was a positive thing in his mind, yet had a clean, simple look he was aiming for. He also liked 16 and 18, and oddly enough, liked the 2 Route 66-style ideas below 5 and 6, which I hadn't even highlighted on the page!

So, after some discussion, I prepared a second set of sketches, focusing on the narrowed field of ideas.

Here you can see the Route 66 approach expanded greatly, along with square idea 18 and the circular idea 27 from the first round of sketches.

After review of the second set, and my suggestions to lean toward 9, 10 and 7, Carlos settled on these ideas to prepare black and white concepts to narrow to a finalized design.

Black & White Concepts
This is a very critical phase, where my rough concept sketches are turned into production quality art. It is here, where a mark is proven to work, or not work in the simplest form possible — black and white. Often, this is the moment where an idea tends to shine and separate itself as the right solution, or fade as an also-ran. The Red 66 logo project was no exception, as the circular concept 9a immediately and clearly step out front as the winning black and white mark.

Color: Round 1
Outside of coming up with ideas, color can often be a tough stage. Colors are often emotional, which is why I like to have a solid black and white logo selected before moving to the color application phase. On set 1, I explored a variety of color combinations, taking into account Carlos' location in Miami as one aspect of color influence.

Color: Round 2
Based on this round we wanted to refine the color selections a bit more, to include brighter colors and explore reds and burgundy colors with similar tones and contrasting choices, like blue-green, orange and teal.

At this point, both Carlos and I honed in on idea 8.3 as our color winner. It had the nice light/dark red tones to reinforce the "red" theme, with a secondary Miami-influenced, cool retro blue-green outer ring for contrast. It had a muted, yet strong overall feel that we both liked.

Conclusion
Since creating the new mark, Carlos has applied it to his blog, and other materials. I'm very pleased with the simplicity and cleanliness of the Red 66 logo — it's organic and smooth, yet has a hint of hip retro Miami.

Thanks Carlos for working with MakaluMedia and I on your new Red 66 logo!

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January 17, 2007

Business Opportunities Weblog Network Logo Design

In late 2006, Dane Carlson of the Business Opportunities Weblog Network contracted me BOWN Final Logo at MakaluMedia, to design an identity for his weblog network.

The Business Opportunities Weblog Network (BOWN) is described as a "moderated list of legitimate business opportunities for entrepreneurs", which features lists of business ideas, and tips.

Dane has been blogging since 2001, and wanted a new corporate identity that was fresh and clean, to help realign his blog.

So, Dane and I started through our normal process of getting information from goals, the business, his color and style likes and dislikes, and other useful information to help me develop good design ideas.

Dane liked the general idea of a lightbulb, so I included this idea, along with several other ideas, to make sure we explored all options.

Challenges
While "Business Opportunities Weblog Network" was descriptive, it's a really long name to deal with when creating a logo design. It would be challenging to be find a way to list the full name and not let the words dominate the identity.

Another challenge, related to the long name, was keeping the identity simple and easily recognizable. How do you show a business network in a single symbol?

Sketches
Once Dane's information was read and digested, I brought out the sketchbook and pencil to get ideas on paper. In 2 rounds of sketches I produced several interesting ideas, incorporating the lightbulb and other ideas for representations of a network. Here are a few selected sketches:

1. This idea featured "Business Opportunities" larger, and a briefcase fashioned from triangular shapes, woth "Weblog Network" tucked under the larger type.

2. On this concept, I've replaced the briefcase symbol with an interconnected triangular grid symbol, to emphasize the network nature of the name.

3. Here I'm indicating a stylized lightbulb to the left, Business with most emphasis and "Opportunities" and "Weblog Network" descending in size and importance.

4. The winning idea shows a lightbulb within a circular symbol on the left, and an alternate dark version on the right. The idea was to show the lightbulb as a node on a network, incorporating both a bulb and network in the logo.

Black & White Art
Once the winning concept of a lightbulb on a network, inside of a circle containing the type was selected, I moved to produce the black and white version of the logo for Dane. The black and white phase went pretty quickly, and we both liked how the concept translated from sketch into black and white art. The next challenge was color.

Color Art
In the color phase, I wanted to show Dane some color varieties, but didn't want to do too many at one time, so I selected 3 color themes with both flat and gradated options, and presented them:

Our eyes were pretty immediately drawn to blue, orange and green. I also liked the blue/green option, though the orange center circle of the first idea (B&C) really seemed to convey a warmth to balance the cool crispness of the green and blue.

After a little deliberation, Dane chose the blue/orange/green option as the winner.

Conclusion
Just last week, Dane completed his redesign of the Business Opportunities Weblog Network weblog, and used the new logo design to shape his redesign. I really like how the colors feel warm, yet crisp and clean, and after not seeing the logo between delivery and appearance, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

My thanks go to Dane Carlson for choosing to work with me and MakaluMedia on his new identity. We both had a great time collaborating and I think we came up with a fun, attractive logo design.

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October 26, 2006

CGI Interactive Logo Design

Last year, after Paul Bradley came across Ian Landsman's Creating a Business Logo article, he asked if we could design a new logo for his company, cgi Interactive. One of my passions as design director at MakaluMedia is logo design and corporate identity, so I was excited to take on the project.

Paul's firm. cgi Interactive, is a software development company based in the North West of England, who develop custom web based applications for businesses. The CGI moniker had its touch-point in the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programming done for clients in the early days of the Internet.

Paul wanted to maintain a connection to the past by keeping the CGI name, while coming up with a strong, clean logo to represent his company, on both the web and with other print materials (letterhead, envelopes and business cards).

Questions & Research
I started as I always do: asking questions of Paul about his company, goals, taste and thinking and doing my own gathering of information about the company. While it might seem trivial, the information gathering phase is critical — these are the words I ponder, as I prepare to sketch logo concepts that capture the company in a simple, iconic form.

From my initial research, it seemed the logomark should be simple and clean, yet still have a bit of a human touch, as Paul mentioned a history of "bespoke" or custom software development.

Sketching Ideas
As I sketched ideas out, I began focusing on a mark made of the letters C, G and I — using them to form a compact object.

Rounded letter-forms turned into squared letter-forms. I liked the idea of the C wrapping itself around the I to form a "G" at the intersection. To reinforce the "I" character, I used a lower cased variation to take advantage of the dot.

Black & White Explorations
We both liked this direction, so my next step was to jump into Adobe Illustrator and create the letters in black and white vector form, where I could explore the relationships of the C, G and i elements:

Notice how the horizontal stroke of the "i" character extends into the counter of the capital C character, to form a G. Then, the dot of the i character fills out the upper right corner of the mark. I like creating logos in black and white first — to assure they work well in their simplest form.

The mark also created an unintentional, yet nice side effect — notice the appearance of of a person on the right, extending an arm into the C, with the dot of the "i" acting as the head? What a nice coincidence!

Color Explorations
Next up was the color phase, which was quite straightforward, as Paul knew he wanted cool blues and greens used. I explored some complimentary warm colors with the mark, but we kept coming back to a combination of dark sea green and a sky blue to capture a solid, professional feel:

Notice also the font used is a Myriad/Gill Sans blend with a little custom tweaking done on the letters. The "cgi" text was kept in the sky blue, and "Interactive" stayed in the dark sea green, corresponding to the colors chosen for the mark.

Paul was very pleased with the final logo design. He felt it captured the professional look he wanted to portray, yet still maintained a human touch, to represent the custom, collaborative projects cgi Interactive does. I had fun working on the logo design, facing the challenge and seeing a unique mark emerge from the letters themselves.

Since designing Paul's logo in 2005, we've had many interesting and challenging logo projects come from new and existing clients, keeping me happily busy doing what I love — logo design.

If you like this approach to logo design, and need logo or corporate identity design work, just drop me a line and let's talk! :-)

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May 12, 2006

MakaluMedia Corporate Identity Portfolio

Since the end of 2004, I've been actively pursuing corporate identity design through the company I work for, MakaluMedia.

The first in a long line of logos was created for Ian Landsman, his firm UserScape and his first product, HelpSpot. In fact, Ian wrote the post Creating a Business Logo back in January 2005, describing the logo design experience from his perspective.

Since the that first web 2.0 logo project, and having been featured in Bob Walsh's Micro-ISV book, I've been receiving many requests to help companies and individuals design their corporate identities. It's been wonderful helping create clean, clear and effective logos for each one of our clients.

Last week I realized we had no central page on the MakaluMedia site, where logo or related information could be viewed. This week I've created a new page where you can view a select collection of logos case studies:

MakaluMedia Group Design Portfolio: Corporate Identity

The portfolio explains why Makalu's logo design process is different, along with 4 case studies and images of completed logos. My goal is to continually expand this portfolio page, making it a handy reference for anyone seeking to learn more about our logo design services before they hire us.

I still intend on going in in depth on the design process for logos I create on the Rohdesign Weblog, as I've done for the Outer Level and LiquidFitness logos. I enjoy sharing my thought process and more detailed sketches here in the weblog. From the comments I've received, readers enjoy it as well.

I'm hoping the two pages will compliment each other nicely, with the MakaluMedia Corporate Identity page providing the overview of each logo design, while the weblog can offer richer details, sketches and the thinking behind each design.

Technorati Tags: corporate identity, design, logo, portfolio, web 2.0

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January 17, 2006

Outer Level Logo Design

I thoroughly enjoy logo design work, so when MakaluMedia clients talk about their experience in the logo design process I'm always interested. Just yesterday, Jon Trainer of Outer Level, posted a detailed article describing his experiences of collaborating on a logo design with me. Jon develops applications, including the game Bullfrog and the utility License Keeper for Mac OS as well as software development consulting.

I thought it would be interesting to quote some of Jon's post here and provide my own thoughts.

Keywords and Goals:

Thankfully, this is where Mike comes in. Something I didn’t think about prior to hiring Mike, but would recommend to anyone looking for a graphic designer, is that you look for someone who can “consult” with you on your image. Instead of just asking what I wanted my logo to look like, Mike sent a short list of questions to solidify his feel for my tastes, personality, and desired company image.

One thing I've found helpful is to describe goals you're shooting for when designing a logo. What kinds of feelings should it evoke in a viewer? Should it convey strength, warmth, honesty? While these might seem to be nebulous words, I think setting goals in words helps clients and myself get focus before the sketch process even begins.

Dead End Ideas:

A little over a week later, Mike sent me two full pages of pencil sketches incorporating my descriptors and his own feelings from the Outer Level name. Some of his ideas reflected ones I have had in mind for years — probably the more obvious and common images that Outer Level brings to mind. These are precisely the ones I didn’t want. I was looking to avoid the common and the obvious. Also in the sketches were some ideas that immediately captured my imagination.

Lately I've found it good to go down the 'obvious' paths to prove that the idea either has some potential — or that it's a complete dead end.

Leaving 'dead end' ideas right in my sketches, while clearly explaining why they are dead ends to my clients helps cleanse the dead end idea out of the system, allowing me to try other areas of exploration and 'let go" of the dead end idea.

There is of course, a risk a client will like a dead end idea. However, because I always provide comprehensive explanations with my sketches, I've found clients trust my judgement when I call out a dead end.

Client Collaboration

There were many bits in these sketches that I really liked. So I sent back my comments along with my own sketches because I tend to think better in pictures than in words.

When Jon sent me his sketches I was very excited to see him getting into the process so deeply! I'm a proponent of visual thinking, so seeing my sketches encourage a client to sketch was wonderful to see.

Color

To this point, the process had been quite fun, though challenging. I had no idea what was in store now that it was time for color. I envisioned blue, red, and even green as potential main colors and wasn’t surprised that I wasn’t alone in this train of thought.

Color is maybe the toughest part of the logo process in my opinion. Colors carry have emotional impact, which is why I like to leave color to the end of the process — this helps void choosing a logo based on the color rather than a great concept.

Unfortunately, once I saw these colors applied to the logo design they didn’t project the feel I was looking for. But, I really liked the warm red-orange sunrise-like background Mike had incorporated. So I searched out some photos of planets, nebulas, etc. and sent them to Mike as a sample of colors that appeared in space. Maybe, these would help change the feel of the logo.
As it turns out, these “space colors” lead us in the right direction.

It's rare to nail down final color selections on the first round because color is so complex. This is why it's so important to collaborate with clients. In this case, Jon sent some reference to give me an idea of his tastes, from which I was able to draw out some new options.

The entire process really is a back and forth; client feedback and my expertise, combined to arrive at a final logomark that's attractive, practical and pleases both the client and designer.

What intrigues me is how fun this process can be, particularly for clients. All of the clients who have collaborated in their own logo process have commented on how much they enjoyed it. Knowing clients get a logo they love and a process that's fun makes for a very satisfying experience for everyone.

If you need of a logo and are intrigued by this design process, drop me a line.

Technorati Tags: mikerohde, rohdesign, logo, design, makalumedia

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September 22, 2005

Liquid Fitness Logo Design

It's been a while since I've talked about logo design on the blog, so having just completed a very fun and satisfying logo design for Liquid Fitness, I thought I'd share the process.

Liquid Fitness LLC, is the personal swim training consultancy of Roberta Challener who has spent years coaching in swimming — from children and adults to members of the USA Swim Team. Roberta had read Ian Landsman's blog post on Creating a Business Logo, and inquired about logo design services at MakaluMedia. After a proposal and some email discussion, Roberta hired us for the project.

As with all logo projects, I began by sketching pen and pencil concepts in my trusty Miquelrius sketchbook. I ended up with two pages full of ideas, numbered them and forwarded the sketches to Roberta for her comments. Of the various sketches, one concept in particular stood out on both pages — that of a stylized swimmer:

Sketches-1

I liked the feeling of these sketches, though there was something bothersome about the single arm. stylistically, it works, but I felt I ought to try a version with an entire swimmer as well. So, I tried a few more ideas (this time in pencil) exploring the full upper bodied swimmer:

Sketch-2

Sketch-3

These seemed just right — and Roberta agreed with my thoughts in her comments. From these sketches I began drawing in Illustrator, turning the pencil concept into a stylized, black and white logomark:

In the end I opted for a flat look rather than the “liquid” look for the mark, as it would be clean and sleek, as well as not trying too hard to convey the liquid theme with 3D styling.

Next was the challenge of finding a typeface and type treatment to compliment the logo mark. I wanted to show emphasis with bold and regular fonts, so explored several font variations with Roberta. She especially liked the modern-looking font, Futura, so we had our font:

Bw-Logomark

Not how nicely the mark blends into the open spaces on top of the letter forms. I am always challenged with LLCs as they feel like add-ons to logos, so in this case I tucked the LLC in below the type, equally deep as the descender on the “q” of Liquid.

With the logo form settled on, we moved to color. I wanted to use cool blue and green colors for the mark, to help forward the idea of water, liquid and swimming. I created a set of color variations for Roberta, and she chose a two-toned blue as her favorite:

2C-Logomark

I liked this color version as well, as the dual blue tones seemed to add a bit of depth. The lighter blue helps equalize the bolder 'Liquid' part of the logotype and downplays the LLC as well, without letting it get lost in the shuffle.

Overall I was very pleased with the process and how well the logo turned out. Working with Roberta was great fun — she always knew what she wanted, which helped in decision making especially. I think Roberta was equally pleased with the logo, which always makes me feel great about a project.

I'll try to be a bit more regular about showcasing logo work from MakaluMedia here, along with descriptions of the process — apparently these are popular with readers and those exploring logo work. And of course, should you need corporate identity services, drop me a line!

Technorati Tags: design, graphics, logos, sketches, swimming

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April 30, 2005

PocketGoddess Reborn

On Friday, my friend and fellow Palm OS User Council member Jen Edwards had a small wish come true — she saw her PocketGoddess website reborn! It was revamped with a new look and a new Movable Type system to make her writing and publishing much easier. I'm most pleased because this refresh will allow Jen to enjoy writing, instead of fighting with a manual, cobbled together system.

I was fortunate to help her out with this transformation, thanks to my good buddy Michael Ashby. He asked me to be involved in developing a logo for Jen and setting direction on the design, so he could focus on the technical stuff of Movable Type and building HTML and CSS templates.

The logo started as all of my logo work does, in my Miquelrius sketchbook. I had a chat with Jen about her wants and needs, then began drawing ideas out of her comments and my ideas for her identity. I wanted mainly to provide a more refined look for Pocket Goddess, something that would represent Jen's personality but also have a classic, professional feel.

Through the sketching process, we both centered on a simple goddess icon, and I explored type and sharpening up the icon itself. From this process I chose two fonts (Gill Sans & Spring Script). For the final stage, Jen and I discussed color, and I learned she dearly loved blues and greens. So, finding the right blues and greens became the task. I preferred a “leafy” green color, though I did explore a blue green option. In the end, the leafier green won out.

Once the logo was determined, I spoke to Michael Ashby about his structural plans for the site. He was setting up multiple Movable Type weblogs for Jen to use, so she could manage all of the news, reviews and other content of her site in a more effective way than her current mostly-manual system.

Michael simply wanted a main page design comp from which he could spin the rest of the site. So, I provided Mike with a quick layout and some graphics, which he turned into templates and eventually, the entire site. Michael put a much more significant amount of effort into his end of the project, making sure every detail was handled, right down to the sub-categories, font formatting and browser testing. Michael spent many hours getting this site up to his high specifications.

I'm very proud of the look and feel and the teamwork we enjoyed during the project. Jen might say it took too long (she was excited the whole way through and both Michael and I worked on the project on our evening and weekends) but I would bet she'd now say that it was well worth the wait. :-)

My thanks to Jen for the opportunity and for Michael's hard work bringing the PocketGoddess site to life for Jen. You guys rock!

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March 1, 2005

ComputerRepair.com Logo Contest Winner

On Monday evening, was was informed by ComputerRepair.com that I'd been chosen as the winner of their logo design contest. First off, thanks go to Erik J. Barzeski, who told me of the contest.

This is the very same contest I spoke of last week, in my Just Good Business post. In the end, good was served, when the logo entry which used a pre-made logo was disqualified. I'm not sure how this impacted the voting, since I didn't have access to internal voting forums, but I suspect it didn't hurt my chances.

Whatever the case, I felt it would be interesting to show my sketches and final submissions to the contest here, to document my process of logo design for those curious about it. I hope to do more of this documentation of work, because it provides insight into a designer's thought processes to the curious.

Sketches
First, I went to a Miquelrius sketchbook, my normal starting point for capturing ideas. I knew the logo ComputerRepair.com wanted should convey the idea of a network, service providers and clients, so I began playing with various ways of conceptualizing a network.

Here's a scan of the concepts page:

Final Art
I wanted to keep effort minimal (not knowing if I'd win or not), so I went right from the best concept, to final art. Normally this would be a longer process, involving the client's input on what they liked, and my explanations of why I drew what I did.

The two best concepts are circled on the sketches page, though in the end I preferred the more 'galactic' looking concept for its simplicity and feeling of movement.

At the center of this logo is the client, around which everything revolves. Circling the client dot is the ComputerRepair.com network, which provides clients with service providers to solve their IT needs. The 4 outer dots are the service providers, connected to clients through the ComputerRepair.com network.

Here are the 4 color entries I submitted to the contest:

I wanted something bright (per the contest directions) yet business-like. I began with a blue/green palette (1), a variation with black logotype (2), then adding in warmer colors (3 & 4) to round out my submissions.

Number 4 was my favorite, because the orange 'client' ball at the center felt like a sun, the blue spiral arms of the galaxy representing the network, and green dots for the service providers. I also preferred the weight of black text on the ComputerRepair.com logotype.

I also took a chance by writing a new, simple tagline for the service: 'IT Services Network' which tied in with the galaxy concept. It also simplified and clarified the tagline being used with their current logo: "Manage the Process."

ComputerRepair chose number 4 for entry into the contest:

I'm very pleased to have won, though there is a chance my logo won't be used by ComputerRepair.com (declared in the rules). It depends on the company, and there may even be some competing work from other designers — I don't know. If things go well, the logo will be used, if not, I have the satisfaction of winning and $750. :-)

More Logo Design Experiences
If this short post on my processes has interested you, I'd suggest reading Creating a Business Logo, a blog article written by Ian Landsman, founder of UserScape software.

Ian and I worked together on his company and product logos. When we finished, he used samples of my work and wrote out his thoughts on the process from a client's point of view. His post was very enlightening, because I learned about his decisions and thoughts thoughts through the entire logo design journey.

Ian's post was informational, but even better, his article has been directly responsible for bringing two new clients to the firm I work for, both in need of logo designs. So, not only did I enjoy the process with Ian, now I'm able to recreate the experiences for two other firms excited about new corporate identities. Blogging does pay off!

I hope this article was informative and interesting. If you have comments or thoughts, feel free to leave them here. If you're in need of a logo for your business, I'd love to speak with you about it — just send me an email.

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