Busy logo redesign (+dark theme)

eqko(61)

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#utopian-io

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Seeing as half of the time when blogging I use busy.org, and the logo on the site leaves a lot to be desired (imho), I decided to develop a brand new logo for @busy.org. At some point they will be moving over from beta to final release and what better way to go final with a brand new 'corporate' identity. They also have a logomark with a bolt in it, but I'm not even sure that's official (although while writing this article, they did update the site so it now shows in front of the text). In any case, I figured I'd have a go at a brand new identity design.

The Brief

First things first and that's always 'The Story', what's the backbround to the logo one will be designing. For this particular redesign, the logo needed to portray the name to say the least (this basically goes for every logo, but still. Since I don't actually know the reason behind the name, I have assumed that it is related to being 'busy', occupying oneself doing a million and one things all at the same time.

That last part, doing a gazillion things at the same time, is something I really wanted to convey with this logo redesign, Busy, multitasking.

I also wanted it to stand apart from Steemit.com which, since it's redesign, has the same teal color for the logo and other highlight aspects. The busy.org blue will also be replaced because of it's too corporate feeling. Blogging should be fun, not business like.

Concept

The shape

The general idea behind the logo is that it portrays a very stylised octopus. For ages, the octopus is the defacto symbol for being busy, doing multiple things all at the same time, multitasking. I guess having 8 arms will allow one to do that. That's more than likely the reason behind choosing the octopus to signify multitasking.

So, to start of, I wanted a B in there, obviously, for the b in busy. Then there's 8 little nubs signifying the octopus' 8 arms. I wanted the hole thing to be able to be used as icon as well so I made it as stylised as possible. Who knows, maybe in the future they will shift to using a Busy SMT and they would need a token icon. Therefor, it needed to be well visible at small sizes and not to intricate with lots of small details. There's a 15° tilt to the B as well to signify motion ... another reference to being busy, always staying in motion.

The Color

As I said before, I wanted to move away from the teal and the blue. I wanted a color that entered your vision, grabbed you by the ears and pulled you in. I also wanted the color to actually mean something.

Orange, the blend of red and yellow, is a mixture of the energy associated with red and the happiness associated with yellow. Orange is associated with meanings of joy, warmth, heat, sunshine, enthusiasm, creativity, success, encouragement, change, determination, health, stimulation, happiness, fun, enjoyment, balance, sexuality, freedom, expression, and fascination.
^source

Having said all that, I'll explain some of the finer math behind the design of the logo and especially the logomark.

The Final Logomark

The Logomark Data

I started with the center of the B (the eyes) which I cloned and scaled using the golden ratio with a scalefactor of 1.618 twice to create the body of the B. Then I took the center of the B's body again and scaled it 1.618 to create the stem of the B. Using the same golden ratio, I scaled the eye down towards the size of the little nubs. Which I then duplicated to create the length of the nub. Then I cloned the nubs to create 8, one representing each tentacle of an octopus. My logomark was born. After that I set to work with the entire logo (logomark + text)

The Final Logo

The Logo Data

For the entire logo, I again leveraged the golden ratio. I created a square around the x-size (the hight) of the text 'busy'I then scaled that by 1.618 to the larger square. I positioned the logomark inside that. Doing so automatically gave me X space between the logomark & the text. This space will be used as a means to determin the clearspace around the logo later.
^{Clearspace is the space where no other element than the logo itself and it's 'air' reside in}

SpecSheet

I also created a specsheet (Full PDF downloadable at the bottom of this post) in this specsheet, I set the rules for using this logo, Clearspaces around the logo & logomark (here you can see how I used the aforementioned X space between mark & text. I multiply that by two to determin the clearspace), colors used (in CMYK, RGB & HEX values) and usescases of the logo. Also the Font that's used in the logo's text.

Iconsizes

16px

32px

64px

128px

256px

Comparrison old vs new

And finaly a comparisson between the old and the new logo.

Dark Theme

While I do want to distinguish busy.org from steemit.com I do LOVE the dark theme Steemit.com has going on. Since I believe dark theme's are way easier on the eyes, I also applied the colorscheme for the logo on a dark theme for busy.org in it's current layout.
Busy.org_dark.png