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Today I want to propose a new episode of the Logocreation Initiative. Put simply, it bases itself on the creative process behind creating a logo. Each element is purely fictional and doesn't refer to actually existing people or things. In this case, I tried to create a logo for a hypothetical bike manufacturer: Tree Cicli.
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As usual, the basic steps in creation: design a pictogram, choose a logotype, and create an informative pay-off to frame the scope of the activity. My reference was Tree Cicli, the name of a hypothetical manufacturing house that would make frames, forks, and much more for the assembly of bikes.
First I focused on the logotype: I opened the Inkscape desktop app, chose the Text tool from the toolbox, and typed the name of our hypothetical business. I started scrolling through the fonts in the font panel to try to find the one that was useful for me. I was looking for one that was not too regular, but with an eye to try the basic idea I wanted to achieve: using a simple unfilled outline for our wording. We can see from the figure where my choice fell.
Later, I focused on the pay-off: the phrase I thought of is one of the most classic to get the message across to those who are looking at our logo. Again, I browsed through the list of fonts to find the right one, thinking of a valid combination with the logo.
The third step was the creation of the pictogram. Since the activity in question focus on the creation of road bikes, I thought of a pictogram that could remember a bike seen from the front. I used 4 fundamental elements, sometimes using a full figure, others just an outline. In the figure I have highlighted with colored dotted lines the outlines of the elements used: we can summarize it in 3 circular elements and one rectangular with rounded corners. With the circular elements, I represented the arms of a handlebar, with the rectangular one - joined to part of a central circular element - the head tube.
In this second figure, I show you how in reality the circular elements are not perfect circles, but resulting from the union of 2 circles in different locations: the final lower part of the handlebar arms has in fact followed the innermost circle of the 2 highlighted. This is a ploy often used in graphic design and makes our pictogram a bit more eye-catching.
There are subtler facets of our pictogram, which I will talk about later. Now I show you instead the logo mounted with all 3 elements described above. However, I wanted to create a more sophisticated variant, adding 2 breaks in the handlebar arm patterns. With this ended the first phase, with the "raw" logo. I also quickly balanced some parts but skipped the more wanted balance since the Tree Cicli project is only for demonstration purposes.
At this point, I chose what in jargon is defined as a palette: the set of colors - analyzed individually - to be used within a group of elements. Below, see my palette. Two different color blends in which I used 2 shades of more or less dark red; then I generated a third color for the logo, in stark contrast to the others 2. It was an experiment, but I didn't mind. I decided to use red for my logo to take up a symbolic concept mentioned in the pictogram, namely that of a heart. If you notice, the 2 arms of the handlebar hint at the very top half of this figure. For the sake of completeness, I also point out the central element that represents a head tube: a lock, timelessly associated with the concept of safety.
Having determined the palette, I gave each element its color. To spruce up the presentation a bit, I added a shadow behind the logo. Here is the result below.
To finish, I created a variant of the logo to combine with dark backgrounds. I changed the colors of both the logo and the pay-off: the colors used for the logo on a white background were too low in contrast to the dark background. Maybe I would also have changed the colors of the pictogram, at least partially; for demonstration purposes, I was fine with that.
If the logo had been commissioned, it would have been subjected to a more accurate balancing phase: the spaces between the characters would have been weighed in a more aesthetically valid way, and then between all 3 components of the logo. In the end, I would have created a horizontally aligned variant for each vertical variant above.
With this, I hope to have involved you a little in the process of creating a logo. Looking to the future, the official Digitall Pre-launch is just a little away, with a promotional phase in which it will be possible to request your own logo in a small size...free. Stay up to date on the #digitall tag to learn more.
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