After recording yesterday’s screencast, I knuckled down to some more logo ideas, refining some of the font manipulation I’d started on Photoshop and Illustrator. I’d begun doing this after hand-sketching yielded poor results, but after a while the kerning and of letters and tweaking of ascender heights seemed a little empty: it was just too precise for this early on in the process. So I went back to my notebook to get a bit more freedom and perspective…
Drawing in my trusty book offered a nice change from the computer, but having the computer there was still too distracting, so I took a stroll to our local park and sat by the river. No digital distractions - just a pen, paper… and some beautiful scenery!
The new environment helped immediately, as did the inspiration from a great book I took along with me (ok, one distraction!): the excellent Tres Logos, published by Die Gestalten Verlag. So today I’m posting some of the drawings, and although they’re rough - very rough - I’d love to get your thoughts on which ideas could warrant some further investigation. In the screencast below, I’ll take you through some of my own thoughts…
As the sketches lose some of their clarity in the video compression, I’ve posted some of the scans to our Flickr account. Click on the preview images below to view the full-size versions.
Jean-Baptiste
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
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I really like the “Carsonified” with the big “S” on top of the third page (right).
The idea of bubbles is also very interesting. It sounds like innovation.
Maybe, you can try to mix the big “S” with bubbles.
Good luck.
Adam
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
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Elliot, first, wonderful stuff so far. Screencasts are the perfect medium for this type of stuff and you’re doing a great job with it.
Second, I pursued the insignia idea a little with my most recent personal “rebranding” and, I don’t know, felt like crests, shields, etc. were a little played out. But, of course, having said that — they always look extremely cool, no doubt about it ;)
Keep it up man, looking very much forward to the next installment!
Serge Lescouarnec
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
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Elliot
Your sharing of the process is very interesting.
I am not a graphic artist far from it but I would like to have people who do bring some of my ideas in visual form.
Are there places such as ‘Design Contest’ where you suggest I could post these ‘themes’ with a small reward for the winner.
See you at South by Southwest if not before.
Serge
‘The French Guy from New Jersey’
Blog:
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
Elliot Jay Stocks
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:27 pm
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Thanks guys - much appreciated! I was starting to worry that my monotonous tones were just too dull for screencasts… ;)
The next ‘episode’ will be coming very soon!
Julian Schrader
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:17 pm
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Another really interesting episode. Makes me wonder wether I should do something about my own “brand”…
andrej
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
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great screencast. really appreciate you sharing your work-flow. for me its interesting how much time and room you give yourself to experiment. And the results really speak for this approach
I tend to be far more restrictive on myself…
cjagers
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:24 am
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I’m curious about what values/story you want your new logo to embody. I can see you have a good designer - but I am curious about your vision. I think a good logo has more than style - it contains a very purposeful message. Can you share?
Elliot Jay Stocks
August 23rd, 2007 at 7:50 am
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Funny you should mention it, Christopher - I’ll be talking about exactly that in episode 4 later today! :)
Carsonified! » Blog Archive » Carsonified rebranding process: part 07
September 4th, 2007 at 11:04 am
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[…] The other day, I mentioned we’re going to go down a different route with the new logo. That’s not to say we don’t like the one that was developing so far; we just feel it would be sensible to explore as many avenues as possible before going with one idea. Basically, we’re going to return to the insignia idea, which I toyed with briefly before dismissing it as “too authoritative” (see the video in this post). I think I dismissed it too easily, and Ryan had some great reasons for pursuing the idea: […]