This assignment was to design a black and white logo for a company or organization that was given to us. While designing we need to keep in mind the appropriateness, and how/if it reflects the nature of the company.
Research and Brainstorming
To get started with research, I first had to ask myself a few questions: What kind of company am I designing for? Who is my demographic? Who are the competitors? What do my competitors have in common and what can I do to stand out while still being appropriate? Is it local, international, worldwide? If local, how does the city it's in represent itself online and in pamphlets?
A lot of questions is a great starting off point, and it's often easy to let the rest just flow, you can clearly see in many places how each question branched into another section of research to be done. However, without a time restraint, it was easy to accidentally spend hours researching just one (AND difficult to keep track of time for the timesheet!)
From my initial research, I went on to do a brain map as a bit of brainstorming. In many cases, it feels more like a flow chart as things often circle back to something else. Creating a mind map was a great way to get some initial gut feelings and vibes of the company area of interest (ie. planned communities, furniture, etc.), and to lay out the patterns I found while doing research.
Sketches and Doodles
Looking back now, I wish I had done more sketches and doodles. I do like what I got, and I ultimately didn't do MORE because I kept backing myself into design corners, or I just wanted to make iterations of the same idea and call them many. I quickly became frustrated with this part as I felt a lot of my time was just sitting there staring at a blank page.
But never fear, I have formulated a plan for the future to combat those corners! Brains are silly and just like how if you walk into a room and forgot why you were there, retracing your steps often brings the thought back. I think by doing most of my work in one space, all of the initial ideas were trapped in that space. In the future I plan to move around a bit more, even just around the house or the same room I think will help. (You ever just suddenly have to move your pillow to the foot of the bed to finally get some good sleep?)
Thumbnails
I know I know, the grid paper is hideous to look at, but good news for you, this is the last time I'll make you suffer with it! All future grid paper is easy on the eyes for your viewing pleasure.
Because I didn't have a bunch of doodles to refine, I had a hard time making nice, tight thumbnails with good contrast and font style indication. I forgot to take steps back from the paper and as a result, I went a little light with the linework; thicker lines would have ultimately made the thumbnails look tighter and more thought out.
Because I struggled with party dogs, I did those thumbnails last, and you can tell I got a bit more confident with using my marker over the pens after finally having taken a step back from the paper (mayhaps a bit too confident, as a pen would have been nice for the Party Dogs banner).
Overall, they all have many design problems to solve, but I learned a lot in this stage of the process in time management, better workflow (mostly in taking a step back for a moment), and presenting (both how I present the piece itself, physically, and how I as a human, present it verbally.)
I absolutely 100% did not subconsciously steal the America First Credit Union logo for quail hollow, I have no clue what you're talking about.
INTERMEDIATES
Dramatically different from the initial thumbnails, an immense amount of time was spent to the side doodling trying to find different solutions, especially with Bella Flora.
With Quail Hollow, I finally found my courage to actually show a lil somethin' in the terms of indicating font style (serif vs sans) as well as combining the two initial thumbnails I had before. The general consensus with the thumbnails was that it was too simple, needed more font indication, and that it didn't read as a quail, with long wings. I think combining the two was quite successful.
Bella Flora was a beast to tackle, and perhaps this is a case where I should have just killed my darling, but I'm determined to make it work. A lot of time was spent on solving it. I ultimately ditched the flower embellishments on the f, as I felt it would be much too complicated and busy, and spent a lot of time playing with an array of combinations of upper and lowercase letters.
Final Hand Comp
The long-anticipated final hand comp! After many tears and experiments, it's finally come to this.
Many of the adjustments I made were after looking at it upside down and backward. I made the letters more round and uniform, especially the f. My intermediate was divided into three horizontal segments, but the final is now a clean easy two. A bit more experimentation is in order, and I want to start experimenting with the negatives!
Computer Progressions
One of the first things I had to solve once I came to the computer, was that the "b" was getting lost and overshadowed by the f. Luckily, it was a quick and easy solution to just add the hook to help it feel more similar to the f.
I continued to experiment a bit with different strokes and brushes as well as changing the cases of the letters to find the right flow and dynamic. Changing the "e" to be round and lowercase helped relate it to the back half with the stacked "o" and "R".
Final B&W Logo + inverse
Alas, the black and white portion of this project is done! Many changes await this logos future, hopefully strictly for the better.
Logo Revision
The biggest change I made to my logo was adjusting the "O" and "R" in "flora". They were originally the same size and it made it difficult to read, but making the "O" larger than the R counter, it establishes a hierarchy of reading.
Color Studies & Color Application
Because I don't have imagery in my logo, I had no idea where to begin. A big concern I had was that once I added color, it would significantly cheapen the whole look. I went a little crazy and just tried as many ideas as I could think of (believe it or not, this is a "weeded" collection). I really love the gold and pink color together, but there's not enough contrast for it to be logical to use those two spot colors for the rest of my collateral, and I had to kill my darling.
At this stage, I'm torn between dark green and pink, or dark purple and pink.
After a lengthy amount of "I just don't knooooooow" it feels nice to just settle on something.
Final 2 spot color logo
It was generally agreed that the dark purple and pink looked the best, taking into account the contrast and how well the tints work together vs. the dark green that was also being considered. (I still miss my gold and pink, I'll have to combine them for the other collateral that I can full color on).
I think overall I did a good job at not cheapening my look, but I can't say I'm quite satisfied with it (yet..?)