Visual Development of a Logo
Last month I had the pleasure of teaching a one day class on logo design for the LINK program. For those of you unfamiliar (which a majority are), this is a program aimed at High School students with interests in Art and Design. It is affiliated with the local Seattle AIGA chapter, where I am on the board.
“The AIGA Link Program connects Seattle area high school students with creative professionals through nine monthly workshops. Every third Saturday of the month, students complete artwork that demonstrates an understanding of the medium presented by a guest artist. Seniors participate in a portfolio-building workshop to create a professional presentation of their work. Finally, the AIGA Link Program awards scholarship opportunities for qualified graduating seniors.”
I really enjoyed the session and was amazed by the talent of the students. In my preparation for the class, I put together a presentation that talks about logo design and branding. With this, I ended up creating a visual case study of my work on the Seafair logo to get the students primed for the same process they would go through. It was fun to put together and I thought I would share it here. If you want to see some of the particular ideas and concepts for how this process works, you can check out this previous post “Paint a Picture with Your Brand”.
This was the original logo we redesigned for Seafair. After going through a strategic branding process with Seafair, we developed key messaging, values and these six attributes.
The first step in logo design is pick up a pencil. Here is where the key ideas develop and sparks fly.
These are the first design concepts presented to Seafair. Things were off to a good start, but we needed to push it farther.
This was the second phase of the designs. Ideas were starting to coalesce but it they were not perfect yet.
This is the final logo. It has the right tone and combination of elements we were working for. The mark matched up with the attributes and represented the main aspects of a Seattle summer; sun and water. We also started developing ideas on how to incorporate the logo with the other 9+ logos in the event family matrix.
The final Seafair logo and brand family logo system