a4uAwards, creating the logo

Last week I got chatting to some of the buy.at Bristolian adventurers (after some serious quad biking and hover crafting) about logo creation and I thought It might make a nice post to have a look at some of the process behind a logo. So without further a-do, heres the process we went through creating the a4uAwards logo.

1. Look out, here comes a font.

It’s not usually my way of starting a logo design unless I really have an idea of what voice I want a logo and brand to have already. In this case I knew from the off that I was going to use a serif font as its a more classic and elegant solution than sans-serif and it brings with it certain traditions and connotations.

2. The first version is often a dog.

After settling on what style of font I was using, I played with the idea of Awards as being a celebration of what is perceived to be the best in its field. With this in mind I played with adding the number ‘1′ into the logo.

Nice idea, but its neither clear or pretty. Has potential though.

3. Refining and adding bits.

At this point I wanted to make the ‘1′ part of the logo more distinctive and easier to read. This was achieved by finishing the serif bottom of the ‘1′ and running the rest of the ‘d’ around it, then varying the color shade slightly. Also at this stage I added in the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ part. I used a sans-serif font for this, mainly as I find too much serif to be hard to read, but also because affiliate marking is in the realm of the new and sans-serif fonts convey this better in my opinion.

I quite liked this though I felt the shapes of some of the letters and the leading and kerning were quite off. Good attempt at this stage I feel but something was niggling me and I didn’t feel it was screaming awards, more like that it was the first awards and that wouldn’t have much longevity now would it.

Team exitem agreed. Now where’s that drawing board

4. Look out, here comes a font (face).

After playing around with serif typefaces I found this little beauty call ‘Byington’. It resolved many issues I had with the previous font face. The ‘A’ was more pointed at the tip and the letters had a more rounded and friendly feel. Add a little bit of kerning and leading to this and it was good to go.

5. A little change goes a long way.

After tweaking my font I was ready to approach from a new angle. I wanted to get more visual with my interpretation of awards and being awarded. I played around with plenty of imagery, most of which was lame (trophy’s, certificates etc…) until I came up with the idea of wrapping a rosette around the ‘d’. This had been my focal point on the word before as its the only lowercase letter to break the horizontal letter height and seems to be a good place for accents.

We felt that the number ‘1′ was still the wrong connotation, plus it was felt that we needed to include the a4u part in the logo too!

After a quick change this was the logo. I was relatively happy with this logo as I felt it combined the new and the old well and was a strong brand After a few weeks of discussion though it was decided that the rosette idea wasn’t viable. I personally liked this logo and battled for it for quite a while.

However, a compromise was needed.

6. Its ugly, but some good came out of it.

After removing the rosette I approached the logo with its preservation in mind. Probably the wrong move and I was, by my own admission struggling for ideas. While playing around with older mock ups I found a version where I had used the number ‘1′ in the letter ‘r’. This gave me an idea as I noticed how the ‘r’ still retained most of its shape and legibility even without the upward stem. Maybe I could fill that with something else.

7. By jobe, I think we have it.

I added in the a4u to replace the stalk of the ‘r’ and changed the colours slightly to give the orange more vibrancy and added a hint of cyan to the black.

There we have it, the a4uA4awards logo in 7 steps. Not all of them easy, but there you go.