We need a logo
dylanatsmith opened this issue · 7 comments
We discussed branding being a bit of a blocker to figuring out the visual design for the website. The first step there is a logo (then colours and typefaces).
This is my typical approach to branding projects:
- Figure out what the brand of this thing even is. Not what it looks like, but what it should evoke. A list of adjectives is a useful output.
- List, in words, a bunch of ideas for visual concepts. It’s good if the adjectives from point 1 can feed into this. I find mind maps helpful for ideating.
- Sketch basic ideas.
- Refine in software (where improvements and new ideas might surface).
In practice, this might look like:
- The Email Markup Consortium is visionary, connected, etc.
- Connectedness leads us to links, chains, overlapping circles... Vision could be an eye.
- What about an eye with overlapping circles in it? Or some big, solid chain links? Pencil some basic versions on a notepad.
- That might lead us to ideas like these...
Of course, sometimes you just hit on some way of arranging the name or acronym that looks really cool and that’s fine, too. One trap it’s easy to fall in with the above approach is trying to be too clever and before you know it you’re trying to work in 3 or 4 visual puns and it falls apart as an at-a-glance mark.
Anyway, all this to say: Knowing our mission, let’s start by listing some adjectives for the group.
Listing adjectives based on our mission statement's end goals worth focusing on:
- Accessible
- Reliable
- Consistent
- Cooperative
- Transparent
Also are we set on going the icon route or is having a text-based logo still on the table?
Also are we set on going the icon route or is having a text-based logo still on the table?
Good shout! Yeah, that’s always an option. What might be the pros and cons of each?
A text-based logo might be harder to use on social media (in the usual square/circle format).
Some pros:
- A text-based logo could look pretty classy and professional if done well
- It's probably lower effort than designing and agreeing on a mark
- It would always be clear exactly what the group is and does.
Some cons:
- We'd likely have to put more emphasis and thought into colour and typography as points of uniqueness
- It might not stand out or look as appealing when displayed on other websites (in a "we're members" or "we support this" type of way, if we anticipate that)
- Because the name is long, it might be harder to use in certain contexts like square display photos on GitHub, Twitter, etc.
I generally like an icon mark/ text combo because then you can separate the two and use them in different situations. Thinking about an eye, my mind automatically goes to AIGA, which uses (or at least the last i knew) an eye pretty heavily in their branding. Not that they own using an eye or anything like that.
If we go the imagery route, we could do a play off of how HTML looks.
Sometimes when I'm trying to figure out how something feels I'll throw the name into google fonts and start looking at how different typefaces make me feel and narrow down from there.
We'll probably need several iterations of the logo, depending the direction we go
- horizontal
- vertical
- square
- icon
Some other adjectives
- Collaborative (which I'm not sure is just a synonym of cooperative?)
- Open-Source (are we considering this group open-source?)
- Forward-Thinking
It looks like we have a pretty good list. I don’t really have anything to add here.
- Accessible
- Collaborative
- Consistent
- Cooperative
- Forward-thinking
- Open source
- Reliable
- Transparent
Collaborative (which I'm not sure is just a synonym of cooperative?)
To me, collaborative sounds like “we work together as a group” and cooperative sounds like “we work together with others.” More of a welcoming, inviting angle to it. Worth keeping both.
The logo has been created. @megbosh and @Wilson110 did a great job on the final version. Thanks for everyone who was involved in the discussion and the early exploratory work.