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:
- An insignia represents quality and the hand-drawn style will reitterate this sense of ‘craftmanship’.
- Adaptability: We can choose interesting elements to include in the insignia that demonstrate a lot of our core values. We could even change these elements every year or so, just to freshen up the logo. We really like the idea of an ‘evolving’ logo to tie in with the nature of the medium in which we work: the web.
- An insignia is classic and shows that we’re not going away. We take pride in our work and stand by it.
- Fun: The various elements in the insignia could be witty or very slightly humorous. This should dispell any ‘seriousness’ usually associated with an insignia.
- We’re also going to experiment with the idea of a ‘full’ insigina for things like print pieces and a cutdown version that works well in a small size.
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.
What do you think?
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