Evolution & Anatomy of our Logos
“You must evolve with time & so must your brand”
“A logo doesn’t sell (directly) it identifies”, Paul Rand.
To get a logo that people will identify you with is a tedious job. Especially when you are an entrepreneur with a dream that demands all the possibilities of the world.
To begin with, I had already drawn knowledge from Aura Shastra and had gone in depth of the color theory to choose the right color family for both the Logo and Website.
What I had come up with after affirming with my brand character, personality, culture and soul were the colors that had to be used in every corner of the website along with the logo.
Now, to decide with the type of logo I wanted I had to research all the different kinds of logo that existed. The data that I sought was unbelievable. I had these varieties of logo that stared at me from my computer screen. The question was ‘Which one? What type to follow?’
With an unusual company name, I was clear about one thing. I did not want to use what everybody was using. I had to get it unique with a personal touch. The name that I had come up as my company name gave the feeling of a person with the word ‘fellow’. I did not want the logo to be something superficial, but something that people could identify with. Thus, the idea of not going with any pictorial or icon form for the logo, but designing it with a mascot. I clubbed two types. One was the mascot and the other was text. I merged these to get my desired results.
The first sketch of the logo that I had come up with personified me as the mascot in the logo. I then inserted the company name as the text in the logo.
In the year 2016, the first sketch of my logo came to life on the live website. We celebrated the moment and gathered appreciations from all.
Apart from the color palette that was used there were many technicalities too. Before even designing the logo the Font family was another important aspect which had to be decided. After a good tedious research, we came up with using the font named Rockwell which had a Slab Serif Typeface. Rockwell is composed of circles, straight lines and right angles being simple geometry at its core.
Why Rockwell? Well, because even with all its mechanicality, it gave out the feelings of being friendly and warm. Two of the cultural attributes that my company held.
After assessing the colors and font for the website this was how it looked like together with 3 Primary and 8 Secondary colors.
This was the first ever thought process, we had gone through while designing the first website and logo for the company. The Digital Fellow had finally a unique identification of itself.
At the company, we have individuals who strive to be better and better with time and outrun their own knowledge and upgrade to the newest trends in the world market and work ahead of time. Within a year of the new website construct, my designer along with the help of a very good friend who was then working with us came up with the idea of changing not only the logo but re-modelling the whole of the website. The work began by becoming a better version of what we were.
The calendar read the year 2017. We were on our work of figuring out the glitches and correcting them from the core. We had to be better in order to make others better. It’s always as said, ‘Preach what you Teach’.
The first logo that we had designed had issues regarding readability on the small screen as the first major glitch that we figured out. The circle that surrounded the mascot overplayed the text and underplayed the design. It wasn’t a very user-friendly design. Even from the perspective of design, the character had limitations when it came to portraying expressions. The moustache of the character prevented any kind of expression on the character. Also, the color palette had the color Green missing. We knew we had to fix this.
Thus, began the journey of up gradation to both ourselves and the logo & website.
The second logo was being made with the utmost care and scrutiny to leave no open ends. The work began.
In the second logo had a total of 8 colors. 4 Primary & 4 Secondary. We had managed to do away with all the extra colors and had changed the typeface from Rockwell to Raleway. Also, before picking any font we had to make sure that it was a Google Font so that it was universally available and website readability would face no problem. The Raleway typeface was designed with elegance in a single thin weight. This typeface holds in a lot of attitude even with seeming simplicity.
The second logo had more yellow, red and green in it. The first colors that I had affirmed with the knowledge gathered from age old studies and traditions. In the second logo the mascot was more visible and we had given the same importance to the text side by as well. Both the text and mascot in the Logo were optimized for small screen viewing. The font weightage had been decided on the prioritized words. The typeface Rockwell was repetitively used because of its warm and friendly look, although it was more to the technical side. The second logo and set of designs were paralleled with the parameters and then latest global trends to be more futuristic and perfect.
Few months had passed when my designer realized that the global market was ever changing and that the trends had steadily altered. Even with the second set of work for the website and logo my designer was restless and wanted to do something more dynamic. Something more that would absolutely refine the designs made by him.
This time the logo had closed lined eyes, which again proved to be a problem when it came to expressions on the character. For an expression to make sense visually you have to have your character designed and act like humans do. The colors we had used were pastel colors which actually turned down the vibrancy for the logo. This logo also made me look younger, which was just virtually though! So we thought maybe we needed more maturity in the logo. Something to show age and knowledge.
The calendar read the month of August 2018. We had decided on changing the website, logo and designs all over again. This time it was more to get it to the line of perfection than just solving the glitches.
We had to make the logo in accordance with the Golden Ratio which is an important parameter to design perfect logos. Golden ratio is a mathematical ratio, which fosters organic and natural looking compositions which are very pleasing to the eye. They are symmetrical and visually appealing and exactly why it is used in designs to make them more user friendly and easily comprehensible. The use of the golden circles in the design has another property of looking neat and tidy.
The first sketch for the third logo had been made. This time we had decided to perfect all the loose ends. A look that would be identified with me.
The completion of the sketch marked the beginning of another journey; the re-refining of the website and logo for the 3rd time in the 3rd year of our existence.
This is a must, you know. To continuously embrace change and upgrade to meet success. Doing one thing and sitting comfortably in an armchair praising yourself for your hard work doesn’t work. People have to identify your hard work and that this exactly how you get recognition for your work. The third logo we designed was personified, followed design parameters and were made while keeping in mind ‘perfection’.
“You achieve only the half when you aim for the full. So, keep aiming higher!”
The final logo was yet to be made and before that we had our color palette and Typeface/font selection. We now have only 4 colors; 2 Primary and 2 Secondary colors. The typeface we changed from Raleway to Fredoka One. This was because it is one big, round, bold font that is perfect to add a little fun to any headline or large text. This typeface went well with our illustration as our website illustration is more leaned towards the humour and fun side. It gave a bolder, unique and round edge look along with being attractive.
The mascot for the logo was now designed with a more matured look as we had decided prior. We made use of Golden Ratio to get the proportions right on the logo. This time the logo was what we wanted it to be.
Started in the Summer of 2016 The Digital Fellow holds the virtues of putting knowledge over experience and has built an amazing vibrant work culture unlike other corporate and with the aim to keep on upgrading all the years down the line. We are our best critics!
Maybe a year or two later, this blog will have another part of it where we tell about our change and our up gradation for the fourth time.
It’s all about constant change, constant up gradation and constant learning.
