I'm excited to talk about this project because it was a strange brew of requests that had to be boiled down to a usable logo. First lets start off with the request in the exact words of the client:
General store feel with a baseball for the 'o's, an oil well for the H, & a battleship under the boho & 62. Maybe look like a brand for a horse?
My first question was what does the the company do??? Is this an oil company, a baseball company, a battelship company, a horse company?
She makes antique garden art, upsells bargains, & has an extensive sports memorabilia collection that she sells at a local booth in Texas.
So now I see that the oil well is related to the Texas region, the baseball has to do with the sports memorabilia, and the battleships ... I'm not sure how that fits in, but we'll try. As a designer, I believe it is my job to give the client what they want, which is not always what they say they want. Here are a few iterations of the ideas:
You can see my amazing drawing skills (sarcastic) exploring a battleship, oil wells, and baseballs. I also explored the typeface from this fun, playful, even silly name.
Some of these are just plain bad, but there are some interesting elements. The key is starting off by doodling by hand. Even though my drawing sucks, I am able to play with forms much more efficiently than if I were designing on the computer using Illustrator or Photoshop. But I wasn't liking any of these directions, so I decided to refocus on what the company does.
Antique garden art and sports memorabilia. Why try to make a company look like something it is not? I'm not talking about the size of the company, because often you want people to think you are bigger than you are, however a logo should say something distinct about a company. I decided to lose the battleship and the oil well because they have nothing to do with the brand.
I started to play with some antique sports themes like old baseball logos, like what you might see on a penant or a little league jersey. And nothing says garden like flowers, so lets give that a shot and see what we come up with. Note to aspiring designers - as soon as you think you have a winner, keep drawing. You never know what else you are going to come up with.
These were better, but still not hitting it (baseball pun intended). I wasn't feeling the antique and it is too busy and unfocused. The word vintage popped into mind and when juxtaposed next to garden, I thought of flower power, the hippie movement, and a Volkswagen bus. The logo needed a more definitive shape which would provide a boundary and more balance, so I thought I'd try a vintage license plate. The text needed to be simplified too, because less is more when it comes to a logo.
CONCLUSION:
The result is a logo that exemplifies simplicity, however communicates the themes of the business. If I were to change anything, I think I would simplify the flower even more, but the client was very happy with it. My good friend Ty Taylor also had a great suggestion to make the apostrophe a flower pedal. I think it has a nice height balance between the left and right sides of the word (referring to the capitol B and the '62). The "OH" in the middle are intentionally left ultra simplified in an attempt to reduce any unnecessary clutter and give a vintage modern feel.
Last but certainly not least, it is important to see how the logo looks when it is large AND small. If 99% of people are going to see this logo as a 250x250 image in the upper corner of a website, is it legible, do the colors work, and is the imagery easily understandable?
... Hopefully it'll do the trick.
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