Designing a logo is a bigger undertaking that you might initially imagine. A good logo must represent a product or service, while being memorable and simplistic. There must be a balance between good typography and image form. A logo design must be able to be reproduced in various sizes medias.
For my first brand study blogpost, I want to walk you through my brand/logo redesign. I’ve been kicking around the idea of a visual facelift to my business for quite some time, and have had it on the back burner for so long because of the busyness of life and business. So, I’ve finally gotten around to it, and I’m pumped to share it with you!
OLD LOGO/BRAND (Created September 2012):
For my original logo, I had made a circle version of a bee (which was, more often than not, mistaken for a fish) and a modified version of the font Nevis.
Although I liked this logo, I felt that I wasn’t leaving a memorable impression with it; it was cliché and somewhat bland. So, after using this for almost 2 years, I decided to embark on the daunting task of creating a stronger brand image for myself.
BEGINNING OF THE REBRAND (June 2014):
When I started the rebranding process at the beginning of the summer, I knew that I wanted to stick with using a bee or some sort of bee element in my logo. I decided on going with a more literal illustration of a bee, rather than my abstract circle bee (fish) type of look. I created this first be in illustrator, and began using it for my early logo iterations.
With this new bee, my first attempt with my logo was to use a wreath around the bee, and put my name on either side.
I was pretty satisfied with this logo at first. The lettering weight of ‘Wetherbee’ and ‘Creative Co.’ was even on either side of the bee/wreath, and I liked the way the wreath brought attention to the bee. But, after letting it sit, and viewing it for a couple weeks, I didn’t feel that it was distinctive or memorable enough to be my new brand.
Back to the drawing board…
ROUND 2 (October 2014):
After letting things sit for almost 4 months (I told you it gets put on the back burner a lot), I decided it was time to revisit it, and land on a new logo and brand design. I ditched the wreath, and tried a more minimal approach to the logomark, letting the bee have more of the focus.
Round 2, No. 1
I liked this direction, but wondered if it was too minimal and wasn’t a strong enough representation for a professional design business. I came to the conclusion that I wanted something more intricate and detailed; something that would grab your attention, and make you look at it for a minute. To start off my next idea, I decided to draw a rough sketch before working up something on my computer. I drew up this rough sketch, and felt like I was finally on the right track. After feeling satisfied with the sketch, I digitized a quick and rough version to see if it was something I could land on.
After feeling satisfied with the look, and having shown it to a few fellow designer friends, I was confident this was the direction I was wanting. A friend of mine pointed out that the bee appeared to look more like a fly, and it needed to look like a fat queen bee in order to be more quickly recognizable as a bumblebee. I modified the bee, and redid the logo to make the layout even, and have all elements line up and have proper spacing.
Now that my main logo is done (yay!), all that was left was to create a color palette and some layout variations.
For the color palette, I wanted to have a rich yellow/gold color, and didn’t want to to go too earthy and give it a nature vibe, so instead of working with browns, I chose the grey family to compliment my signature color.
Project completed!
