Logos

PROJECT

Visual Identity

If your Visual Identity is the Tree of your Brand, then the Logo is the Seed From Which it Grows.

DESCRIPTION

Logos are an important component of a brand but not the brand itself. Brand concerns itself with a larger experience and personality. Likewise, logos are not the whole visual identity but a piece of a larger vocabulary that makes up visual identity. Its the flag of your brand. We often describe logos as the seed that a visual identity grows out of. Logos are one of the most difficult exercises in graphic design because the designer is most often working towards the distillation of complex ideas or layers of ideas into something that is easily understood at first glance but has carefully orchestrated layers of subtext that can be revealed either simultaneously or over time, without getting in the way.

From a design perspective, the perfect logo is one in which the final solution has a sense of rightness, and that by either adding to or subtracting from, causes the logo to be less successful. Still think you can get that online designer guy from Russia to make you the right one?

The following are a number of the ones we’ve created that we like. Not necessarily from the biggest projects but the ones that we like. Click the (i) button to read more on the process of each.

CREDITS

Overdrive Design Limited

Nic & Syd

The logo for this jewelry company was designed to integrate a visual “hook” that reflected their products. In this case hook of the logo design is a necklace.

Robbins Hebrew Academy

The word for “life” in Hebrew is “chai.” The two Hebrew letters that make up the word “chai” are chet and yud. In Gematria (the numerical value of Hebrew letters), chai is equivalent to 8 and yud is equivalent to 10. So “chai”, chet and yud together, equals 18. The symbol is assembled from 18 separate pieces resembling a flower surrounding the star of David.

Inkling Music Studios

The logo design is informed by the elements of a guitar fret which simultaneously also resembles eyes and mouth. The “I” can be broken off and used as a symbol on its own. The I and two dots also form a musical repeat symbol, indicating the studio is a place to which you can return again and again, and to remind one they should never forget to practice!

Brandworks Agency

One of my favourite logos. Circa 2000. It still holds strong. Nothing is extraneous. Everything is integral.

Trident Cycle Works

God knows there’s a ton of skull logos and more specifically a ton of bike logos that use skulls. If you take away the Trident it would be one of them but that’s the thing about logo design. You find a simple idea that makes sense that sets it apart visually and infuses a personality.

Up is Loud Sound Studios.

Sound engineers understand that when you move the sound slider up, the volume increases in the sound mix. This logo evolved when one sound engineer needed to clarify the process with an uninitiated layman. He drew an arrow on a Post-it note and stuck it on the slider. We thought it was kind of clever. Voilá, an identity is born.

Wolf Gertner

Angel Investor partnership. No concept. Good type. That is all. Some designers only ever think on this level, in our case, its merely a tool of many in our
tool box.

Student Awards

Logo design for a service that matches university students to scholarships and other student awards. The paper plane is an irreverent nod to the classroom and towards upwards mobility.

Pure Home Couture

Beginning as a retail business selling French bath items, candles, jewelry and cosmetics, Pure Home Couture has added wholesaling of their own proprietary brand to the business. The logo design reflects the elegant product line and the owner’s fascination with French Empire aesthetic.

Doc-it

Logo design for a company that provides document management, workflow and document storage products for accounting firms. The mandate of the company is to help accounting firms become paperless. The logo suggests a “now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t” notion for a sheet of paper.

Massive Tank Studios

A logo design for a music school. The name and visuals reflect the owner’s previous stint in a metal band.

yconic.

Formerly Student Awards. Yconic provides a service that matches post-secondary students to scholarships and other student awards.