In this unit of logo design, students gain the freedom of expressing ideas for a specified brand, imitating a real-world situation for which they create a logo. By doing so, students have the opportunity to capture the style and expression for specific ideas and concepts within their designs.

 

Inspirations of logos vary; due to this, many styles are appreciated but will not necessarily be a plausible path for me to take. I found myself appreciating the simplicity and usage of the brand name within the logo design itself, and I was aware of keeping the usage of details away from my design.

This stage was full of uncertainty, and at that time, I was settling on the idea of going along a template with a given context instead of creating one myself. Some of the simple ideas are displayed below:

Through exploring different structures, I chose a few of these designs which appealed to me the most, focusing on the symbolism of nature and a straightforward design with interesting shapes. By attempting different lines and shapes, I soon realized that a name for the brand would benefit the designing process, hinting at letters that would symbolize the brand itself:

Water brand

Name: Willow Waters

Background: Willow Waters was established in 2012. It is a water brand which has developed in popularity and would like to improve its logo design to match their current advancement.

Audience: Those of all ages, particularly those who appreciate minor aspects in daily life and are interested in different forms of expression with middle income.

Context: Required for water bottles and online usage.

Keywords: Pure, Simplicity, Calm

The earliest versions of my logo are presented as the top 2 of the collection below, I experimented with different shades of blue, and geometric silhouettes for a rather pleasing outcome. When beginning my creative process, I noticed that 2 W’s that matched the overall brand name, which is “Willow Waters,” would be a good starting point.

Therefore, I shaped all the designs with 2 W’s, but the creation of the ‘W’ like shape, was rough, and they were drawn stiffly. This created a futuristic style that doesn’t match the background of the brand. Due to this, a rather smooth shape was created, with curved outlines to match the pattern circling the two W’s.

Feedback for most of these creations surrounds the topic of varying symbolism and styles, which seem strange to fit together, with the figure in the middle slightly odd, tribal, and mask-like, whereas the surroundings are much more smooth and harmonized. In addition to this, the fonts utilized within the designs could’ve had more variations, and experimentations, keeping in mind, I spent time searching and exploring for different fonts but was ultimately bound to the font displayed above due to my own stylistic preference, the Bodoni 72 Smallcaps.

Regarding the unharmonious choices of the logo, I made of few more attempts and realized that it was hard to capture the original feeling conveyed to the audience shown in my first few drafts. As a result, I did what I was able to meanwhile still susceptible to portraying a design of my own liking. This meant simplification of the logo, refining, and ridding of unnecessary colors and shapes in an attempt to smear the line of difference between them.

After the refinement of the first few designs I’ve made, the 3rd logo seemed correspondent of the circling fin-like outlines and curves, successfully erasing the logo of the clash in style, instead focusing on a modern display.

Some revisions of the logo are shown below which were utilized for the mockups to a certain extent, in addition to the original symbol that is displayed in many of my logo variations. Throughout the process of finishing my design, it underwent many revisions, smoothing out uneven lines, reshaping different aspects, and fixing the ratio of different elements to the logo, as an example, the similar-looking logos below used in the mockup above consist of the same elements, but with differing sizing.

After experimenting with multiple designs on different mockups, I added slight additions to the structure to balance out the empty space and fit it with the context. This specific choice is due to the representation of the keywords, further developing the given shapes. Aligning the design to the keywords, the font and sizing of the figure seemed unbalanced to a certain extent and therefore required resizing and rearrangement.

This led to minor changes to the design to express it as a memorable figure, and a recognizable logo, utilizing affinity and transitions the png version of the designs into an SVG for a simple fix for the revisions.

Concluding the creation of this logo, the infographic references some examples of successful presentations of a logo, including title, some major stylistic decisions, examples, and an ultimately matching theme within the presentation. An attempt to portray different colorings and variations of the logo under multiple contexts, the presentation provides a recoloring of the black design into a white.