This is a continuation of an existing logo and brand identity redesign project for Abacus Insurance Brokers. Abacus was the first American online insurance brokers and the rebrand is part of their continued motivation with the company. I also created the tag line for the new Abacus logo.

The images above show the start of the brand identity guidelines, and specifically focus on the general usage of the Abacus Insurance logo.

We have logo versions for: interior and exterior signs, website header, stationery and print design, a short/mini logo and just the logo mark with/without a boxed container. The contained version being used as website favicon and social media profile image,

For ease of use, and visual continuation, the right side of the logo specification sheets share common information for: typeface choices and colour palette. The top-left displays each of the logo variations.

This is not the end of the project as we are still working on aspects of the redesign with the design taking a semi organic, adaptive and evolutionary process. The creation and format of the brand guidelines have taken a more modular form where additional designs and sheets can be added, with ease, into a binded folder.

I will continue to post updates as and when they are ready.

An image strip (above) showing how the Abacus logo mark came to be

This image (below) shows a few design ideas for branding of one small part of the identity: golf balls.

Abacus Insurance Brokers is a current logo design project that involved a significant brand update. This is the first of a number of logo specification sheets for the various logo styles created for Abacus. This first sheet focuses on version of the logo which will be used for exterior signage.

There will be more Abacus updates in the forthcoming weeks.

This is my latest project and is quickly becoming a favourite. Need to stress these are the first round of preliminarily ideas to be thrashed out so it is most assuredly early-days. There is, however, always a chance that the final design may end up being almost identical to the one above, but this ultimately comes down to the client.

A little background

This logo design project is a brand update for a t-shirt company which was originally designed around a retro style locomotive; the brand name “T-Shirt Express” is linked to the train version of “express” rather than pizza express!

My advice to the client was to keep the idea of a train but “improve” the aesthetics as I felt the original idea was solid. No need to re-invent the wheel, so-to-speak.

We discussed trains at length which gave us both a pretty good idea of the direction to take. The client liked the idea of using a “cow catcher” and/or “track” as well as giving me a list of styles of trains through out the decades.

I have settled on three initial variations of the core idea which starts with the full ingredient version based on a mash-up of train styles, including: traditional steam locomotive, art-deco inspired and the heavy industrial Russian style etc.

The wording plaque is formed from the shape of a track sleeper, and the typeface is GarageGothic Bold.

Pretty excited about how this project has started so more news will inevitable be forthcoming over the next few weeks.

The following t-shirt image was sourced from http://psdgraphics.com

The Pure Storage Logo Applied

Exciting day today for Pure Storage, a recent logo design client of mine. Today is their official company and product launch after a long period of operating in stealth mode.

See Press Reports: The Wall Street Journal, AllThingsDigital

I can now show you, for the time time, how the Pure Storage logo [brief run down of the idea behind the logo] has been applied across their FlashArrays which I am so happy to be able to finally share. I have also exhibited a few other applications of the logo via this post, Pure Storage Identity Design

It’s one thing to see your logo on a website, business card or even shop front, but quite another when you know it takes pride of place on the latest possible storage technology.

When Pure Storage approached me last year I had no real idea of the end result due to the highly secret and sensitive nature of their product and plans. I had a few rough visuals to work to but could not have foreseen how the logo would eventually end up being applied to the FlashArrays.

The manor in which the logomark has been cut-out and raised to take pride of place on the FlashArrays with the vibrant orange set against the gun-metalesque enclosures provides for a pretty strong brand image. Pure Storage did not stop there with the application of the logomark as they have also shaped each perforation so as to, seemingly, form the letter P.

This post is just to show-off how the Pure Storage logo has been applied with a few product photographs that have been made available to me. A proper logo process post for Pure Storage is in the works.

An interesting fact about a certain member of the Pure Storage team you may find interesting:

Pure Storage Factoid

“An early key hire [for Pure Storage] was Michael Cornwell, who was lead technologist for flash at Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle). Cornwell also worked at Apple, where he was Manager of Storage Engineering for the iPod division, and oversaw that product’s transition to — you guessed it — flash memory. Remember the first iPod nano? That was his baby.”

Via AllThingsDigital http://goo.gl/J648W

LinkedIn Recommendation

Just to finish off is the recommendation that Matt Kixmoeller from Pure Storage kindly gave me on LinkedIn. Matt Kixmoeller, hired Graham as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2010.

“I hired Graham to drive our identity design at Pure Storage. Despite his remote location (in the UK vs. us in the US), Graham felt like part of the team and really wanted to understand our company and value so that he could drive an identity for us that was reflective of that and differentiated in the market.

I’d say we were a challenging project for Graham. We hired Graham after a failed project with another designer, and had high expectations for this project and many opinions on our side to bring to ground. Graham stuck with the process through many rounds of iteration until he had that “flash of brilliance” moment (you can read about this on his blog), and once we had the right logo everyone was instantly on-board.

Our identity has proven over the past year to be a real asset for Pure Strorage, and has been something that we’ve feature everywhere from web usage to in physical 3D form on our actual hardware product. I would whole-heartedly recommend Graham for any identity project that your organization is considering.” August 17, 2011

Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, Creative

Just wrap up this post I just had to again include this wooden back-lit version of the Pure Storage logo mark that Matt carved for the office reception. Looks stunning.

Now I know the answer.

The dear people at COLOURLovers, and I believe specifically Molly Bermnea, had put my Tucando logo design along with the colour palette on the home page under the Trends section.

A small story with a moral

We can go out of our way to make sure we are found in all the obvious places, the usual places and places we feel could be feeding grounds for prospective clients, but we can never quite control how or where our work is shown that could generate new and unexpected leads.

The power of the internet is geeeeeenourmous.

Feeling pretty chuffed if I am to be perfectly honest with you.

After posting the Vintage VW Logo Specifications Sheet; one thing lead to another, and now I can present a reasonably faithful recreation of the Vintage VW Logo Specification Sheet.

Why the recreation?

No real reason other than I thought it would be a fun project to work on, but also the original lacks some quality so can’t be enlarged and printed out to well. I thought that if I reproduced it, warts and all, it would allow me a up close view of how this was originally created.

It’s not until you tear it apart and start looking at all the various line weights, arrows, text and the sobering realisation: we didn’t always have copy and paste and mathematical precision based artwork tools at our disposal.

It’s also nice to know there is now a detailed replica of these logo specification.

The original was crafted by hand, ink and ruler.

Image above is also the recreated version.

Imperfect perfection

It was tempting to balance all the unbalance aspects, to unify the type sizes and styles, to bring all the vertical and horizontal alignments to perfection but I didn’t. Using the enlarged version of the VW logo specification sheet that Steve Smith and Farzan Balkani found I was able to, reasonably accurately, reproduce the imperfect perfections of the original.

There are a few areas where I had to just suck it up and accept close was close enough. Some of the type styles are just impossible to nail as they look like they have been handwritten, and there is a mixture of a lettering set in a variant of Avant Garde Gothic.

So some of the lettering, should you feel the need to check my accuracy, will be close but not exact in style. What I have done is to ensure the spacing and placement of all elements is as accurate to the original as possible.

I have created two main versions which you can download.

1. The first poster will be as the first image in this post with blue elements on white, and is saved as both PDF and Illustrator .ai.
2. The second poster is as the original complete with faux textured paper, and is a high resolution A4 image at 300dpi. The textured background was created from scratch and not using stock scans of any kind. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s close enough for my purpose.

A thought

I am conscious of not creating too many variations of this so as to cause confusion over the prestigious nature of the original. For this reason, and this reason only, I have added a small credit that states this version is a reproduction.

I would ask, with respect to the original artwork, that you leave this credit in place—if posting variations online—so as to avoid this getting mixed up with the original.

Download Recreated-Vintage VW Logo Specification Poster

If you want to reblog this then I just ask that you link to this post and ZIP file.

Bonus Downloads

A few people muttered about a desktop wallpaper version so here we a couple of sizes to download.

Download 1920x1200px VW Wallpaper

Download 2560x1440px VW Wallpaper

Download 1680x1050px VW Wallpaper

Download iPhone 4 Retina Wallpaper

For some time now I have been eager to create a larger version of my Logo Identity Guideline Template For Download which has proven to be a very popular resource. So here is a 4 page template for you to download, change, tweak, destroy and use.

This is not the template I was hoping to make available as trying to create a 4-6 page template that is both useable and flexible is actually quite challenging. The reality is that every logo is different; different size, different proportions, different variations, different typefaces and so on. If I had lots of time on my hands then I am sure I could manage to knock out something, but doing one just for the sake of a downloadable resource hasn’t been feasible due to time constraints.

In the end I decided to stop stressing over it and decided that the next time a working project came up, that required more than a one page set of guidelines, I would create a version as a downloadable template.

I try to keep my identity guides as clean and as simple as possible mostly because I am not being paid to create twenty page detailed whoppers. Even simple guides take forever to put together so more often than not a client just can’t afford the extra costs for a super duper identity guide.

Work-in-Progress

This particular guide is a work-in-progress for an existing client so is not yet fully complete. I still think there is enough of a layout here for you to tweak and adjust for your own needs as well as providing a reasonable starting point for your own identity guide.

One of the biggest hurdles a designer faces when contemplating an identity guide is, “where on earth do I start?“

The thought of starting one of these can can leave you quite perplexed as each one will typically need a new approach. Maybe this will give you some inspiration and a little boost to get started.

The Template

This template includes the same sort of details found in the original single page template, but as you will see I have spread the content out over four pages. The finished version of this template could well reach 6-8 pages so please bear this in mind when working out the content for your own guidelines.

If you have not yet looked at the original one page version then I would suggest downloading that first as I have bundled in additional files that you may find useful in conjunction with this template download.

The ZIP included an InDesign document as well as a PDF, but if you need other versions then please let me know in the comments and I will be happy to oblige.

The one issue you may have when opening the InDesign file is to do with fonts. I have used Helvetica Neue for all the body copy and headings so if you don’t have this installed then you will need to replace the fonts.

Download Four Page Logo & Identity Guideline Template.

Screenshots

This is probably the most important page of the guidlines. A logo can be ruined if careful thought is not given to how it is incorporated in or next to other design elements. Allowing the logo to breathe in its own white space is one of those designery things that not all people would be aware of.

By providing a simple diagram of the logo and its clear space avoids the logo being placed too close to other design elements.

I have also added an example of the logo in place on a photograph where the clear space is working to provide a nice gap to the right and top of the logo.

Given the range of colours in this project it made sense to put aside a page which details the acceptable variations of logo colours. I also provided breakdowns of each Pantone colour as the equivalent CMYK and RGB values.

The page with the business cards is incomplete as I have yet to design the rest of the stationery, but you can see where I was going with the overall layout. You could have one page for business cards and another for the letter head etc so it really just depends on how many pages you want to roll to. I would rather go to more pages if it means a clearer and well spaced out set of guidelines.

Unless you are commercially printing the guidelines then I don’t see any need to be economical with the space.

The last page covers the usual methods of abusing the logo design such as: squishing or pulling the logo out of proportion, using the wrong colours, reorganising the layout and recreating the logo with totally different fonts.

If you have found this resource useful then I would of course appreciate any Google +1′s and/or FaceBook Likes you can spare. That would make me quite happy.

Signing Off

As I said at the beginning this template is somewhat incomplete, but it should still give you some ideas on how to develop your own set of guidelines. When I have complete this client project then I shall update this post with the completed set of guidelines.

The Pure Storage story has been one of pride and patience. The logo is one that I have been particularly proud of but have not been able to fully exhibit it due to Pure Storage being in stealth mode. A brief summary that was posted back in August 2010.

Only now am I able to show further images of the logo and identity in context and I am really bloody excited to see what the guys at Pure Storage have done in visualising the logo on external physical objects.

The illuminated sign above is just super cool. It has been carved from solid wood, varnished and then illuminated from behind. This acts as welcoming sign for all visitors and employees of the company.

Even the beer glasses have quite a presence about them.

There are a few photos I would love to show you of the logo mark on the hardware but I have to be a little bit more patient before doing so. Although the web site is live and news of Pure Storage can be found in the NY Times; the official launch of the company and it’s product line has yet to be announced.

This is when I will be able to write up a proper logo design process post as well as being able to show how the logo has been applied to the hardware which is super cool. I even like how the logo looks when placed on top of a stool. :)

Really very excited to see how Pure Storage evolves.

In the meantime here are a few more images of the logo.

Just an idea of how well the logo mark stands out as a regular Twitter profile image.

As mentioned above there will be a detailed logo process post to coincide with the official launch.

Fashion identity design for “mark by design”. Process post to follow.

The name given to the line of clothing/accessories is based on both surname and christian names. In itself not new but I’m hoping that the idea of forming a cross/X from the middle of the M will help with brand recognition.

A sort of monogram I guess.

The M/X creates quite a strong and unique mark in itself and doesn’t need the wording to convey the full brand name. There are also some cute little ideas with marketing that can be done with the X/cross in terms of labeling and retail branding. Not to mention the obvious “mark this item with a cross” as a means to highlight something to a shopper.

The mark is clean and simple so can easily be applied in any number of ways to materials including: screenprint, embroidered, embossed, punched and stamped etc.

Logo design for Frictn. Full logo process coming soon. For the type fans the logo type is a tweaked version of Helvetica.

Came across a post on a Tumblr blog, apartness, that fronted a literary classic. The book in question is called ‘Never Kill A Client” by Brett Halliday, and first published by Dell in 1963. You can also see a Flickr set containing this image.

It wasn’t the book that caught my eye but the awesome title. A title just perfect for some idiotic tinkering by this creative individual.

I doubt I am the only one with a cupboard full of dead clients–I think one or two might still be alive– and not to mention that the floorboards are getting a little full right now. I am happy to say that once I saw this book I started to see the error of my ways and I come before you to not preach but to pass on some valuable advice.

No matter how frustrated you might get with a non-paying client or a client who has stolen one of your valuable ideas; killing them I now believe is a tad over-the-top. I have started to explore less permanent solutions to my client issues, and am happy to say I have gone 1 month without killing a single client.

Never Kill A Client – It’s Just Not Cricket.

Fonts

The brilliant and free Franchise Font by Derek Weathersby was used for the leader whilst Helvetica Neue was used for all other body copy.

Download

If you want to you can download a vector file of this poster or you can just grab the images in this post as they are reasonably high resolution JPG’s.

Feel free to mess around with the colours in the base Illustrator file BUT please leave the content and sign-off intact. If you wish to reblog this then by all means please do so BUT ensure you direct your readers to this post for any downloads.

Other Posters

I am not a poster designer but I have a few other poster designs that I have cobbled together than you may find fun. These include a personal favourite: No. I don’t design logos.

Due to interest in the previous version of this poster I felt it was about time to refresh it a little–not to mention address the minor issue of the incorrect apostrophe.

I have filled out the design with larger text with emphasis on ass. I think the reference to ass was lost on some; it’s a nod to some peoples perception of what competement logo design involves as well as reaffirming that the buttocks are indeed a source for all your logo designs.

Added a mono version as well for all you purists.

Download vector file of all 3 Posters

Feel particularly chuffed this evening after seeing the above video. At the time of designing the logo for Feedly I had no idea that it may eventually be animated so seeing it unfold at the beginning of this video has left me with quite a smile on my face.

If someone had asked me how it I would have liked to have seen it animated, and if I was able to imagine it being animated, then this exact video sequence would have been how I would have liked it to have panned out.

It is brief but the smooth laying down of the white strips on the green is just perfect in my mind, and really fits in with the initial concept and design process of this part of the logo.

I am so proud to be part of the whole Feedly experience and seeing my first ever logo animated in this way has really been a wonderful experience.

View original full-size HD Feedly Video

Feedly Video Credits

Motion Designer Mattias Peresini – Music OBNY Music & Sound Design

A few weeks ago there was in interesting post doing the rounds on minimal style business cards. The motivation was to create mostly blank cards with maybe a logo or one specific useful bit of printed information; leaving the giver to jot a custom note or allowing the recipient to do it themselves.

I found this to be a really interesting take on business cards as it allowed for a more personal and unique touch to what can be a rather steril and generic action, and so I decided to create some myself.

They are not business cards in the general sense, I would say they are more of a business note card.

What And How

The first thing was to decided on the level of information to be printed, so I opted for a double sided option: full logo on top front left and then my tag line on the bottom left reverse leaving ample blank space for notes and scribbles.

I then looked at how one could get this information onto the card and considered regular litho or digital printing, creating an even more minimal look by just having a Spot-UV of the logo, and the last option was a deboss or letterpress. As this was more a trial run I opted for the quick and easy option of printing just black, and saving the more costly versions if the trial was successful.

Where And What

Moo.com was the obvious choice for hassle free and cost effective printing so the only other decision was the card type to use. I usually use their coated stock which is really nice and relatively firm at 350gsm, but the coated card can be tricky to write on with Biro or pencil.

To allow easy scribbling with any kind of pen or pencil opting for the uncoated and 100% recycled card option makes perfect sense. The uncoated cards actually has a heavier tactile feel to it than the coated card in my opinion.

The cards took just over a week to arrive and I am really pleased with the overall look and feel of these minimal style logo cards. When you add them to the Moo card holder, which fans out, you get a nice spacious view of the cards and logo.

As there are three levels to the card holder I reversed the card on the bottom level so that the tag line is also viewable on presentation, as you can see below.

Worth A Shot

If you are bored with full contact business cards then it is well worth considering this option as a supplement or replacement. Being a logo designer the concept works nicely as they really are just my logo cards, and the message could not be clearer.

Cost £28: 50 double sided cards on uncoated 100% recycled stock plus white Moo card holder including P&P and VAT.

The only proviso here is that you always carry a pen or pencil but as I rarely go anywhere without my notebook and writing stuff this is not a concern.

Featured on Moo

Proud to have these cards featured in a blog post on the Moo.com blog.

Graphic minimalism : MOO cards by designers

This logo process post is for And We Succeed Consultancy, business and management consultancy running within the NHS sector. Alison previously worked for the NHS Institute; “The NHS Institute transforms good ideas into workable solutions for an improving NHS.”

Buckle your seat’s as this is one epic logo process post.

Initial Thoughts

This was massively unknown territory for me, consultancy within the NHS is somewhat of a speciality and is certainly not an area I have ever had to deal with before.

To make it even more interesting Alison would be the first independent consultancy specialising in this area which meant we didn’t have any competitors to align up against or to measure our own designs up against. This can have advantages as well as disadvantages. New territory just means you have few constraints and it may just set a sort of visual identity precedent, or you could get it drastically wrong. Thus providing up and coming consultants an opportunity to laugh and design a more appropriate identity.

Alison provided some clear thoughts for the logo and a few these caused me to take notice, so a tactful touch was in order. To some degree I would have to be lead by Alison as she clearly had the experience and knew the sector inside out, she also knew how she wanted to be perceived within the industry.

We had to balance her initial thoughts for logo ideas and her overall experience with anything I could suggest visually: we had to find an agreeable balance.

This was looking to be quite a challenge.

The Brief

The brief was pretty thin, which was understandable given the overall sense of unknown territory. As previously mentioned, Alison did have a few specific requests which were met with some doubt. The main request was that the logo should or feel like the NHS logo.

Alison explained that she wanted to totally shred any visual link between her and the NHS; that AWS was not some off-shoot or NHS approved company.

A few of the visual requests included a jigsaw or jigsaw piece and the colours purple and gold. Although I understood the logic it was now time for me to do my part and explain that slam dunking in a jigsaw piece would be less than agreeable whilst not totally eliminating the idea.

The challenge was to work in some kind of jigsaw link without it screaming “I AM A JIGSAW PIECE”.

Moving onto the suggested colour palette, purple is not a colour that agrees with me, so on a personal level this was quite disturbing–purple has to be used quite carefully, it’s just one of those colours that seems to have very specific associations–and I felt double doom with gold being thrown into the mix.

So this pretty much wrapped up the initial brief.

Review The Competition

Unlike Brokers Direct that had small army of competitors logos to abuse, to be amused and inspired by AWS was just out there on her own, up against the NHS.

The only logo we could use for direct reference was the actual NHS logo, nothing out there remotely close to what Alison is doing with AWS. Given the explicit instructions from Alison that AWS should not be associated with in any way with the NHS, that about summed up the competition.

Alison did manage to find just two companies that were far far from being remotely close to AWS but were the closest we had. These are those two logos:

And there is that purple and gold .

Phase One – Typography

As is quite often the case, typography takes the initial lead. First I will look in my own extensive font library for any number of fonts that appeal to me, these styles can vary from sensible to rather odd to get an initial feel for the project.

It is nice to start with something so visually accessible. Fonts are just there and you can have a page of suggestions in no time, the logo-mark is a whole other kettle of fish

Starting with font choice is a good first option as it will give you a sense of immediacy and progress at such an early stage.

Alison also seemed to be keen in using the main initials AWS as the main focus with the full name running underneath And We Succeed Consulting underneath, something like this.

Not too shabby but the overall impression is of a larger company, not an individual. Also, I don’t care much for using both the initials as well as the full wording,it is unnecessary and add’s clutter

FORMING INITIALS I first looked at how the initials would look, but I immediately felt this was not the route to take. I tried a number of styles, shapes and sizes yet nothing really seemed to work for me. As the NHS logo is based on initials my feeling was that we needed to avoid any similarity with the NHS.

I felt using initials for a consultant lacked warmth and would feel a tad too generic. I really wasn’t convinced and I didn’t spend too much time at this early stage looking at trying to make the initials work.

I did enough to present Alison with a few rough doodles with a decent reasoning of my decision. Using the full name felt more personal and would make people feel more connected with the company name. Given this was a brand new company and also a first within the sector, overall familiarity with the full brand-name is crucial

With a new company you want to be associated with the full name, not your initials.

Often larger brands and companies will shorten to initials if consumers themselves have taken to referring to them by initials. Sometimes a mass consumer voice can weald extraordinary power and sway.

So the AWS initials were out.

These are just a few of the font styles I looked at and included both serif and sans-serif styles. At this early stage my gut was leaning towards serif for the main logo wording. It seemed to fit with what Alison and I had discussed but also because it was a clear move away from the sans-serif of the NHS logo.

The challenge was making sure the logo didn’t look too stuffy, old or traditional which some serif fonts would give you.

At this point I needed to consider how to balance up the main serif wording with a sans-serif element; to inject some freshness in and to dilute any risk of fuddyduddyitus.

This is where talking to your client on the phone becomes invaluable, I still know of many designers who practically refuse to use the phone and talk direct with a client. Some times when trying to understand a client explain a particular thought, emotion or idea cannot effectively be done over email.

Although Alison asked for  And We Succeed Consulting as one line I felt that this presented several problems, overall line length being one. The sans-serif version doesn’t look too bad on it’s own, but we need to factor in a logo-mark at some point. The serif version just looks and feels a bit meh, for want of a better word.

Long line logos can work, but you need to be aware of how the logo will fit in within the identity as a whole and how it will be applied. For this project I was looking to create something a less wide and so was aiming to split it over two lines.

TIP – Just throw down a bunch of font choices on your pasteboard but try not to think too hard at this stage. When you have exhaustive your own personal collection of fonts then it’s time to move to the web.

My first port of call is MyFonts.com: it’s the most accessible and varied collection of fonts from some of the best and least known type foundries and designers. I can spend days on Myfonts and I will bookmark any fonts that feel close. Once I have exhausted MyFonts I then head off to the individual font foundry websites as not all fonts are cataloged with MyFonts.

The exercise is to feel you have looked at and exhausted the range of font choices, only then can you say you really did try to find that special one font.

So now I had decided that the wording would be split, I then mocked-up some rough examples to get an initial feel for size, position and overall look and feel. The image below borrows some of the fonts shown above but I have created lowercase and uppercase versions for comparison.

Although I was leaning towards a serif for the main wording I still wanted to see how it would look with a sans-serif on the first line and serif as the secondary line.

There are many variations and combinations when using serif and sans-serif together like this so you need to take your time and look at as many combinations as you can. What you see above is just a small part of the tests I carried out and did takesome days to work through.

TIP : Your eyes will need a break if you are repeatedly focusing on repeat text blocks like this, so try and factor in a day or so break from that job, it does help. As with anything that you stare at for long enough, judgment can be significantly impaired. A font combination that you are convinced looks crap after a 12hour stint could look much better the day after.

Font pairings can be tricky to get right so take your time.

At this point I took a break from the whole font thing and threw some energy into the logo-mark. Having a reasonable idea of the overall style and shape of the wording, I now needed to see how this would look with a logo-mark.

Phase Two – Logo

This part is always tricky and potentially the most time consuming and nerve shattering. I had my goalposts as requested by Alison, the jigsaw part of her brief needed to be visualised in a way that was subtle.

Because I have taken my sweet time to get this logo process together, I have unfortunately lost track of my initial sketches which is a shame.

I do tend to keep a detailed record of the process on my Illustrator pasteboard, I always keeps copies of each graphical element I am working on. Each time I make a change or alter a portion of an icon, I will duplicate it and work on the the new copy. This leaves the original intact just in case I need to revert back or like this, have a detailed version history of each small change made.

Start at the very beginning. I required a jigsaw, so that’s what I drew.

Here we have four various shapes of jigsaw and to be honest, I was excited even at this stage because in my head these would look pretty solid next to some well chosen type. When I looked at each one of these I felt that the overall solution was not so far away.

The first thing to do was the lay one of these alongside the wording, just for an initial impression.

The logo was already evolving and I felt pretty sure this would be close to the overall shape. Clearly  I was not going to slap in a whole jigsaw piece but it did get the mental motors churning. I played with some sketches based around the jigsaw piece and liked how the 4-sided piece looked as a whole.

Inspiration can come from anywhere: one of my stress toys is this little blue desk spinner. Whilst pondering the jigsaw I saw the spinner and the pieces–pun kinda intended–started to fall together. I doodled with this rounder knobbled look to see if we could alter the jigsaw enough for ut not to clearly be a jigsaw.

The rounded design didn’t quite work for me, reminded me too much of some Knights emblem but it was a useful exercise as this spurned a few more thoughts and ideas. I realised that the logo-mark would probably end up in a container of some kind and given the overall shape of the icon so far, a circle seemed favorite. Putting the icon into a circle then lead to a few other ideas.

Looking at these early visuals, especially the latest versions within the circle, I was visualising a compass and wondered if this would also tie itself in to what Alison represented.

I considered the brief again and took it upon myself to agree with myself.

Yup, we could definitely angle in a compass association to Alison’s line of work. She provides solid direction for companies, helping them find their feet and setting them off in pursuit of riches and stuff. So now we had a compass and jigsaw that could be factored into the overall design.

This was ideal because it helped dilute the jigsaw link which made me feel happier. I took a quick look at some compass examples on various stock sites to see if there was a particular angle I could work on. I liked the clean lines, the simple representation with white dots of the first icon and felt that something along these lines would integrate awesomely with my jigsaw piece.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Useful to note that I had yet to show Alison anything, so I was going a bit out on a limb. I did decide to call her around this time to give her a verbal update and talk to her about the compass and jigsaw integration; the response was very positive.

With this update, I felt it would be more productive to work on presenting a solid and near complete design rather than a loose sketch or mock-up. So with this news I proceeded in earnest, I was feeling particularly pleased with how everything was moving along, far better than I had first imagined when I first heard the words jigsaw piece.

I think this goes to show that starting from an obvious image like a plain old jigsaw can lead to more interesting concepts. Like I preached, start at the beginning even when it feels foolish and cheesy to do so. Ideas have a habit of forming when looking at the obvious and expected.

Taking the lead from that stock compass icon, I played with some simple variations above. Adding small dots or shapes to reflect the inner parts of a compass. Just these four little details changed the overall jigsaw considerable, which was just what I was hoping for.

This shows the progression from a rounded jigsaw to the more pointy or arrow style at the end. A further gift from the compass and yet again helping create a more unique icon.

When Alison first saw the idea she instantly remarked how the logo-mark also resembled a top down view of a table with 4 people sitting around it. This fitted in nicely with what she does with AWS, sitting round tables talking to clients about stuff and stuff.

So flukey bonus points to me for that one.

Just To Say

Although this sounds reasonably straightforward and logical when you read it, I have had to miss out quite a lot of boring and repeatitive stuff in this post.

Trying to keep the balance between relevant and interesting whilst trying to show the smaller details that actually contribute to the final design. There is a heck of a lot of backwards and forwards with a project like this, playing with infinitely small changes and variations. It’s these details that can make all the difference but also take up a lot of time.

This is why I rarely take on a project that is needed quickly. I like to play the detail devil and this means knowing the schedule is flexible enough to tollerate all my dillying and dallying. So back to the project.

Phase Three – Combine Words & Graphic

Whilst playing with the compass I had also been tinkering with the typography again and had made a few selections, narrowing down the options to just a few. I had decided to go with serif on top with sans-serif falling on the 2nd line and justified to the left. I was looking for a particular style of serif font that looked well proportioned and relatively compact in upper case.

Many serif fonts have small x-heights and can be reasonably thin in proportion so this narrowed down my selections quite a bit.

You can see from the example above how the blue font FoundryWilsonExpert looks and feels much more compact than the black coloured Eldorado Display sitting underneath. A lot of this is just a personal preference with serif fonts, I just much prefer them to be more compact looking, they feel better proportioned but also have a less rustic feel than the “taller” variations

This is where the joy of font-pairing hits you hard and fast.

Phase Four – Font Pairing

Prior to making my mind up with the serif selection, I had earlier decided to use font like Gotham for the 2nd line–if you are looking for some Gotham alternatives, I might just have a few for you–which falls into this more compact and well proportioned shape.

Looking at the image above again you can see how the first serif example when paired with Gotham looks a little unwieldy and lanky. The proportions feel way off and also now looks a little top heavy, even though Eldorado is a relatively light font.

Compare this to the right hand version where I have paired FoundryWilsonExpert with Gotham, this looks more like a natural fit. Foundry does not look out of place and seems to sit comfortably on top of Gotham; this is because the fonts share similar cap-heights.

TIP: An easier way to see this in action is to put both serif and sans-serif on one line. Eldorado and Gotham on the top and FoundryWilsonExpert and Gotham on the bottom.

With consultancy the same point-size and ensuring the serif cap-height matches the cap-height of Gotham, you can see exactly how much narrower Eldorado is when viewed in this way.

TIP: Another visual clue is to look at the overall shape of the letter O and see how it varies with your suggested font-pairs.

The horizontal guides represent the cap-height whilst the the Gotham O is blue with the serif overlayed. FoundryWilsonExpert on the right is much closer in style than Eldorado will ever be.

Bye bye Eldorado.

Phase Five – Colours & Details

Taking ALL the above into account, this is what we end up with.

A jigsaw forms the core shape whilst the compass provides some extra clues to what AWS is all about. Details like rotating the icon 45˚ creates a more interesting shape and allows the rounded jigsaw bits to fall either side of the more pointy compass like arrow corners. Some of this was just about shifting focus away from the jigsaw piece. The white specs are little mini-triangles to provide some visual interest to the centre.

Finer details had to be thrashed out over a few days, which included: how thick or thin to make the circle key-line, how much space the icon should take up within the circle, how big the wording should be in relation to the whole logo-mark, how much space to leave between the two elements, how much tracking to apply to the tag-line which would determine how big or small the point size should be in relation to the main wording.

Phew.

Then we had colour. I’ll touch on this quickly as this was not so quick to sort out. I really didn’t see purple fitting in with this logo although I did show Alison a number of colour options.

Bright purple was out of the running but we still couldn’t really decide on a suitable colour.

The idea was that this would be a 2-colour job, black wording and the something colour for the logo-mark. Alison quite quickly discounted the brighter colours as these just didn’t work with the overall style of the logo, so we ended up with more muted options.

Now this is where it’s always important to keep what the client has or had suggested in mind, no matter how obscene it might have sounded at the time. At the beginning Alison had suggested purple and gold and I had quickly discounted the gold as the mental image of this bright yellow hue was way too hideous.

Looking through my Pantone swatch book I flicked right to the back and saw a few pages of metallic colours, including gold. Never before had I considered a metallic for such a prominent area, let alone gold. Yet the colours staring at me were beautiful and I was coming round to the idea of actually using gold, just not quite the gold Alison had in mind at the beginning.

We narrowed down the metallic options to Pantone 8003C.

What a result. The client ends up with both her initial requests: the jigsaw piece and the colour gold, bundled into the finished design.

With final artwork approved for the logo I just had to knock-up some business cards for which I was terribly excited about this because it meant fully utilising Pantone 8003C.

The chosen design has an all-over tint of Pantone 8003C on the front with the logo-mark dead centre. So with one colour we were able to create the impression of something a little more interesting, especially with the white out portion of the logo-mark as the main focus.

The reverse is a pretty standard layout, nice and clean.

As I had used Gotham in the logo for the secondary line it made sense to keep this as the main secondary font for the overall identity.

My master plan was hoping that when printed on super white stock that this would really set off the logo-mark.

The result was better than I had hoped. As you can see from the images below, in certain lights the metallic gold reflects the light with its subtle sheen.

You made it.

The End.