Logos (42nd Street)

It all started with potato printing.. Since then I've been working on rough logo ideas for 42nd Street (Peer Ambassadors). I started by looking up successful rebranding of logos such as Instagram, Subway and KFC to name a few. I found that the logos have become significantly more simplified. Instead of detailed images, they are now just basic shapes. I don't know whether this says something about how we're getting stupider. I also looked in the library for a book on logos and graphics and found "Logo-Art Innovation in Logo Design" by RotaVision. I found a couple of silhouette logos that I really liked as well as a stencil-esq font.

I then did mind maps of the words "Role Model" and "Support" and then found visual references for them. I made a couple of mood boards on Photoshop of what I found. The next step was to do a mind map of ideas for my own logos. I came up with a few key points such as "2 people embracing" and something that isn't patronising to young people. My main idea was to have 2 figures high five! I ended up running with this idea throughout it all.

Next I went on Dafont.com and downloaded several various fonts. I wanted them to be somewhat immature but not to the extreme. I ticked a couple that I wanted to progress further, but I ended up scrapping them and trying a separate font. During all of this I was progressing my skills in Adobe Illustrator and I fell in love with the software, just being able to finally make my own logos that looks professional is brilliant.

I then wanted to do lots of sketches of random ideas I've had and wanted to run with. As you can tell I tried lots of ideas, but the only ones that I really wanted to run with was the street sign, the hands doing a high five, the two figures doing a high five and the flower that has Peer Ambassadors growing out of it. I then tried out some colour combinations in crayon.

The time had come to do them digitally! I recreated the two figures high five and tried a few different colour combos, the flower, the street sign and the hands high five. I then asked for some feedback from my peers and realised they had flaws. The two figures were to stocky and looked like boxers. The flower looked basic, as well as the sign. The hands high five completely failed and I couldn't do it at all on Illustrator.

So I decided to redo the hands high five completely and it turned out so much better. I applied several brush effects to it and then picked out the best one added a type to it from Dafonts with some colour and it was finished!.. until I got more feedback and then I changed it up again. I reduced the size of the hands and messed around with the placement of the text and I'm now finally done with that logo. (Typeface is Dinomiko)

I didn't progress the street sign any further, I thought it was a bad idea to continue it as it just looked boring anyway.

The two figures high five was toned down to look less like boxers and to be made thinner, I also added the same font as the other high five, but I'm not a fan of it so I didn't progress it further.

The flower was my favourite, but it looked too corporate for a charity. It was also quite hard to read with the P and B being grown out to make the flower. I tried to change it up by moving the Peer to the right but it still looked bad. I took everything away besides the actual flower and used the same font as the others around it. I got some feedback and from it I changed the flower colours to match the same as the texts colours and changed the flower to the right.

So I had two out of three logos fully developed and I needed to find a third. I was prepared to start sketching out a new idea, before doing that I played around with just the actual text that I've been using and it looks brilliant on its own, It looks like a simple professional logo.

Next I wanted to see how I could test out my logos so I went online and found an image of a test letter and added my 3 logos to it to see how they look and I'm really impressed with them. I then screenshot the actual website where they have the current logo and added my 3 in and I'm really happy with the outcome.

I've really enjoyed the logo making. Working and progressing my skills in Illustrator has been really useful for me considering I've been toying with the idea of doing Graphics next year.

Here are the final logos I have designed, although I am incredibly happy with them. I feel like I could of changed things up and had more of a selection when it came down to choosing different fonts and colours. I kind of stayed in my comfort zone an although I really like the logo that just says "peer ambassadors" I feel like its a bit of a cheat because the one I was going with wasn't working out. Then again simplicity is key and I think it looks professional enough, especially for things like letterheads.

If I was to do this sort of brief again I would definitely experiment more earlier on. My sketchbook last term was really creative when it came down to experimenting. I feel like this one (although it's full of stuff) is lacking the artistic flare. Besides that I'm happy with the outcome and working are with illustrator.