It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Sorry guys - we’ve been so busy! The rebranding is now heading towards its very exciting conclusion and we’re going to show you where we’re at…
We’ll be back in a couple of days’ time with more (perhaps the final) updates, so stay tuned!
Everyone liked the direction I started to explore with the ideas you can see at the end of the last post; the bolder, more immediate direction was starting to remain legible and recognisable at smaller sizes, and it was less ‘fussy’ than the more insignia-like ideas. However, a couple of the guys thought that the insignia idea hadn’t really been explored fully yet, so I returned to using a more prominent flourish and attempted to wrap the whole thing in a more visible ‘shape’.
I wanted to keep the decoration to a minimum because I felt that too much of it would simply push the logo towards something too antiquated; it was all about getting the balance right and evoking a sense of classic cool blended with forward-thinking modernity.
In an attempt to reference the ‘home-made’ approach, I carried forward the brush idea from the previous designs and I think this mix of the three elements - the modern type, the classic flourish, and the hand-made paint - has really started to form the strongest ideas so far.
Continue reading to check out the images. As always, you can see the full-size versions on our Flickr account.
Sorry for the shortage in blog posts recently, everyone; let me get you up to speed with the development of our new identity.
The insigia examples went down a treat and I think we all learnt a lot about the elements we wanted to include and those we wanted to avoid. In essence, we wanted to avoid the old fashioned, coat-of-arms kind of look. At the same time, we wanted the logo to appear modern without looking like we’re trying to be futuristic.
With the team hungry to see something bold, I returned to Illustrator and picked out a few font options I thought it might be worth pursuing. After narrowing down the fonts, I did a quick bit of kerning on each one and printed out a few copies. I then headed down to the river for a bit of quiet time away from the computer and began to sketch over the print-outs…
While we prepare the next post, we thought you might enjoy a light interlude of some more recent sketches. Click the images for their full-size versions.
General rough ideas.
Among other things, a study of the primary shapes that make up the coat of arms on our passports.
Drawn on the plane on the way home from Barcelona, a study of our hotel’s coat of arms, a strangely Roger Dean-esque idea of my own, and a prawn with ‘rark’, a fictional affliction that seems to befall many of the characters in my sketchbook. But that’s another story!
General rough ideas.
Some more studies (on the right) of other logos’ flourishes
I went to Spain on the lookout for insignia, and would you believe it: the hotel we stayed at had one! Stupidly, I managed to completely miss it until we were leaving and only managed to grab this card second before we headed out the door…
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:
So with that in mind, I began a new line of research. Ryan and Gill, on holiday in Greece, had already been inspired by insignias they had seen on a restaurant wall. I found a few in Barceona too, but my main source of inspiration came from one of my all-time favourite books: Tres Logos (published by Die Gestalten Verlag), which I’ve enthused about before. In order to get everyone in the team talking about what they liked and disliked about insignias, I photographed about 90 logos of that ilk in the book and then made a basic web page with all of the photos and spaces for the team’s comments under each image.
The findings - now complete with the comments from our meeting - can be found here: carsonified.com/misc/insignia
What do you think?
After a run of daily blog entries, I apologise for the opposite end of the spectrum you guys encountered the following (last) week; I was on a short holiday in Barcelona. However, a week offline allowed for some much needed breathing space, and with Ryan and Gill on holiday as well, the natural pause allowed everyone to reflect on the logo ideas so far. People got their thoughts down in writing. New ideas were discussed. Older ideas were revisited. The sketch pad filled up a little more. I exhausted another biro. And home-grown graphics from our respective holiday destinations provided some unexpected inspiration.
On Monday we’ll all be back in the office and there’s much to discuss. I’ll aim to post again on Tuesday when these new ideas have become more refined.
As a sidenote (read: shameless plug), I’m going to be speaking at the London Design Festival later this month, so if you fancy coming along, that’d be great! :) Details are here.
In his comment on part 4, Andy Croll raised a really interesting point:
It did remind me of the US university sports team logo thing you often see on GAP or A&F sweatshirts, [and] that kinda nods to a community / all-in-it-togetherness that you get as a sports team
That’s what it had been reminding me of! And I certainly don’t have a problem with that - I think the “all-in-it-togetherness” of that logo style may well have been subconsciously influencing me anyway. The point is: despite bearing some similarities to the Coca Cola, Carlsberg, and possibly other identities that begin with ‘c’, I’m going to run with it for a bit. I don’t think the logo’s criticisms are strong enough to warrant an outright rejection just yet… but speak up if you think I’m wrong!
The next step I took was probably the most enjoyable: I started tracing over a print-out, modifying the type by hand. And it was at that moment that I realised the beauty of a hand-drawn, sketchy, work-in-progress type of aesthetic was exactly what I was after! The images are below; scroll down to the video if you want a detailed explanation.
On the train home, I started drawing over a print-out with some ideas on how to alter the characters.
This one’s with the suggested modifications from the sketch above, but actually I don’t think they worked.
More subtle refinements. Note that I’ve changed the swash from the ‘n’ to the ‘f’, despite what I said before about not wanting to do that. Check out the video (at the bottom of this post) for a detailed explanation. Also, there’s a larger version here.
This adds a bit of neatness while retaining the hand-drawn quality of the previous image (this is still rough, by the way - it was a quick experiement with Illustrator’s ‘Live Trace’ tool). There’s a larger version here.
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