A refresh of the Design Sojourn Logo and Brand!
This has really been a long time coming, but I never really had the time to get down to doing it. Now at home and nursing the flu, I have decided to spend a little time putting the finishing touches on my new Design Sojourn logo and hence brand.
First, a few points on the intent of the original logo.
1) Design Sojourn is really about a journey, or a design journey to be exact. The logo’s handwritten font was envisage to reflect this journey. As we all know the creation of a design is never an easy process and filled with ups and downs. The roughness of the type was meant to signify this.
2) The old logo font was also tweaked to look like a left pointing arrow with a tail.
3) The tail was also mean to represent how at the end of our design journey we come to a single (hopefully right) solution or point.
With this in mind, I would like to now introduce to you the refresh of the Design Sojourn brand identity!
Old Design
Here are some of my thoughts in how I came about developing this logo refresh. Do note, that I have been thinking of this refresh or almost a year since I got Charfish Charlie to help me out. Thanks again Charlie!
Revision 1:
1) The original logo was created in Photoshop and I asked Charlie to help me transcribe the logo into a vector format.
2) As it was also meant to be a refresh, Charlie and I also looked into reversing the direction of the arrow (point to the right) but still keep to the idea of a tail that lead to a point.
3) Unfortunately I decided not to implement the end result of this exercise as I still was not sure really needed to get my mind what I wanted the new look to be.
4) I thank Charlie for his help, as I knew It would not be fair to keep Charlie on if I was undecided on what I wanted.
Many Revisions Later:
1) After saying goodbye to Charlie, I continued to experiment with different colors as well as the tilt and angle of the logo.
2) I even started from scratch by sketching out a number of different logo designs to explore. None, however, had the simplicity or impact of the original.
3) I knew I still wanted to go with a logo based on a font, as the Design Sojourn name is long and I can’t seem to figure out a symbol design that works. I even created a design that looked like an alien crop circle! Thus I started back where I was.
4) l was clear that the logo must still represent a journey and its bumps, but I realized that the tail was getting arbitrary.
5) Thus in today’s final articulation, when I removed the tail, it all seem to fall into place. This final incarnation is a lot tighter and cleaner than the original, though it still reflects the core character of the brand. However this refresh now has a much stronger directional feel of the journey going or getting somewhere. Much like the quote from Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons” : “Keep moving forward!”
This logo is still a work in progress, but before I do decide to implement this logo site wide and update all my banners, I would love to hear your feedback? I always believe that branding is a two way process, what the brand owner thinks it should be, and what his audience thinks it is. Ideally the two should be the same. So please do have you say by leaving a comment below?
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Update: 1
Old Design
Thank you very much for all your feedback! I have made the following revisions:
1) Reduced the size and width of “Design” and made it more balanced with “Sojourn”. It was not the intention to make either word more prominent. It is a combined journey in design. However it was hell adjusting the word sizing and still keep to that reducing arrow/funnel look. In the original revision the “Design” would naturally be a larger word if I wanted this arrow head idea to still work.
2) I agree with some of the feedback on the readability issues with “rn” and spent some time to tweek the letters. I made “r” more defined, and increased the width of “n”. Hope its better now.
3) I also took a look at the shearing (leaning) angle and after trying a bunch of different angles I still like this “forward” accelerating angle the best. It looks progressive.
In my opinion, the end result looks a lot more balanced, but still keeping to the new logo’s tightness. The new revision does look a little more considered, where as the original looks more aggressive. I’m still on the fence, but am leaning towards the revision. Would probably let it sit a little more as I will need a bit more time to get a feel of what represents me best. By the way, just ignore the color, I’m working on it right now.
Update: 2
I took a few more hours to tighten up the spacing of the letters. This is the sort of thing you never really notice, until someone with a practice eye brings it up! Thanks Kevin. Well the final logo is up top, so enjoy and let me know what you think!
Raph
August 21, 2009 at 3:04 pmHi Brian,
Bummer about having the flu.
My thoughts on your new logo.:
The old logo is more legible in the sojourn part.
I like the use of bolder colours in the new one, although I am not sure that orange all over the site is the best idea.
The current blue around the site is noticeable but doesn’t overly draw my attention to everything at once. Allowing me not to be distracted from the content when reading.
The orange is pretty loud and colourful compared with your previous colours. In a way the orange almost seems to clash with your writing style, which isn’t loud or colourful – it informative, well thought through and measured, which leads me to the conclusion that as a person you are probably thoughtful and measured, not prone to blurting out the first thing that pops into your head. Which is what the orange makes me think of (a loud, in your face type of person)
Anyway that’s my 2 cents, hope some of what I mentioned is helpful.
Kirsten
August 21, 2009 at 3:15 pmHi, I think Raph’s on the money with his 2 cents’ worth. I like the darker charcoal for ‘design’ – could you keep the original ‘sojourn’ colour (or a slightly stronger hue of it)?
best wishes, KT
PS I was lead here by Design Droplets on twitter š
DT
August 21, 2009 at 3:17 pmHi Raph,
Thanks for your great feedback! Indeed the Sojourn text is getting tough to read. I will go back to the drawing board to tweak that a little for sure once I get all the feedback together.
Also excellent point on the orange. I left out highlighting the new colors in the post, looking to see it has an impact and it looks like it does.
Some food for thought. Please keep in touch.
Kevin (@kg_creative)
August 21, 2009 at 3:20 pmA couple of first impressions – the old brand reflects and emphasizes “Sojourn” – the new one, with a larger emphasis and a slight perspective, emphasizes “Design”. It can be perceived as an interesting commentary on the direction of the site. Perhaps the journey is now set, and you are now on a clearer Design path, rather than looking for which design path to travel?
On the color, I slightly disagree with Raph. From a contrast perspective, while the orange is associated with “loud”, it also has a lower contrast with the white than the previous light cyan/blue. I think it /can/ work with the rest of the site, but application of color may have to be measured and experimented with. Perhaps the introduction of an auxiliary color to soften the orange may not be a bad idea.
From your description though, it does look like you did experiment with color quite a bit. Over all, i like the redesign. It’s similar enough to be recognizable and somewhat familiar, but it is tighter, better paced, and has a progressive feel to it that the previous one didn’t have. Getting rid of the trail ending with the dot actually opens up the design and allows it to move visually, aiding the “sojourn” imagery.
Kevin (@kg_creative)
August 21, 2009 at 3:24 pmit is the “rn” part of “sojourn” that is a bit hard to read. It feels visually detached from the rest of the word, and it’s visibly smaller.
DT
August 21, 2009 at 5:20 pmHi Kirsten,
Thanks for taking the time to leave your feedback.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the great run down on the colors as well as the sizing. I am working to see how it looks with the size of the Design word reduced. You are right though it is slightly overpowering.
With the “rn” part, I can fix it to make it stronger by giving more curve to the “r” and making the “n” wider. But the reality is this sort of perspective logo, makes the last 2 letters small. Is it really that hard to read if you did not know much about the site?
In my further explorations based on your suggestions, the logo comes across a lot more tighter. I will post a logo update when I have it.
karl
August 21, 2009 at 5:24 pmHey Brian, enjoy your writings. Anyway, I think the logo has gone too strong on the italic effect. If the sojourn aspect is meant to be emphasized as a journey of design, the previous logo kind of meanders along whereas this one points directly, at a point so to speak, losing that journey aspect. As for the orange, I think it creates associations with industrial design which is good if you want to do that, but it also makes me recall a time a few years ago now where renderings in grey and orange were the rage. I consider what you do in your writings and bloggings etc. to be more far-reaching and not as narrowly focussed as this logo.
That’s just me however. Hope to have been some help.
Pat Law
August 22, 2009 at 3:20 pmI’ll start by saying that I’m not a big fan of handwriting typefaces by and large, but I understand the rationale behind your application of such.
I appreciate the fact that your logo makes no apologies for not being as visually direct as possible – I find that too many of us pampered fools require to be spoon fed these days. “I can’t read it” or “its not clear, what does it say?”. I don’t see why Design needs to be that straight forward all the time when Life isn’t.
Personally, I like the update although I’m violently against the choice of color. It’s a biased opinion really. Because I do know you personally, I find you more a blue than an orange. Heh.
Kevin (@kg_creative)
August 22, 2009 at 3:49 pmHi Brian,
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that was bothering me about the “rn” and why it is feeling detached. I figured it out.
It’s not the “rn” specifically that is the problem, it is the extended connector on the “u”, which creates an artificially long whitespace between those two letters. I would start by kerning the “r” closer to the “u”, then if you can, modify the connector to tilt upward and connect with the r closer in. I think once you do that, you will also notice that the “rn” can get a bit larger while still maintaining the “arrow” effect, and keeping the word still feeling like a unit.
While kerning the type, I would also bring the “j” in sojourn a bit closer to the “o” to tighten up that whitespace, and do the same between the “r” and the “n” for. Also, watch the connectors between “e” and “s” in “design”, they seem to be slightly off.
DT
August 23, 2009 at 4:36 pmHey Pat,
Thanks for your reply and yes I am a blue man!
Hi Kevin,
Again you have a good eye on this, and thanks for your suggestion. I will play around with it and see how things look!
David Airey
August 23, 2009 at 7:58 pmHey Brian, it’d be good if you showed the old design in your post, so readers can compare the before and after.
From memory, I can’t actually tell what the differences are, but from your update, the revised version is definitely an improvement. The “sojourn” text is now more legible.
David Airey
August 23, 2009 at 10:34 pmThanks for adding the old design.
Having compared the two, I think the update’s a positive one. The narrower confines aid adaptability, and the proportions between both words are more even (whereas before, emphasis was clearly on “sojourn”).
You’ve shown us how your logo has been updated, but I missed the part about your brand (as in the post title). How are you changing the overall message?
Nice switch, Brian. Thumbs up from me.