loco for logos

If I could do one profession for the rest of my life, it would be designing logos. I could do it all day. Logos are a way for companies/people/businesses to express their identity in a quick glance (see this post about the evolution of the logo... dating back to cave drawings!). I could go on and on. When I thought I would do a post on logos here, I quickly realized there is just too much material to cover in one post. So you will see more posts about logo design in the future... mark my words.

The reason I have logo design on the brain is because I recently designed a logo for my friends Justin and Danielle. They are urban farmers. Yup. The live in St. Louis, in a normal city house, and they have a farm in their backyard. YellowTree Farm. So neat! They provide ingredients to some of St. Louis best chefs. It's sustainable, local food at it's best! Check out this article about them from this week's Post Dispatch (the article is what prompted their desire to have a logo).

I didn't get tons of info from them about what they wanted. While I love love love having this creative free-reign, it is a bit of a challenge. Luckily, some of the imagery/symbolism is inherent in their company name, and also in what they do. YellowTree and Urban farming are the two thoughts I concentrated on when coming up with ideas. Obviously, some sort of illustration of a yellow tree was in all of my designs. Now, originally, I had thought I would go for a more rustic, almost country look... traditional farmers market type stuff. But it seems my brain was focused on the Urban aspect of the farm... so most of my designs ended up being more modern looking. Here are the options I came up with for them to choose from:


And here is the final design they chose (it had to be altered from the original because they to keep YellowTree as one word, and they needed one with a ".com"...):


I'm posting these because I think it is always fun to see the background of logo creation. So enough about me... what about some of the world's most recognized logos? What's their story? Here's a few...


Unilever has one of my favorite logos. I am a fan of simplicity and minimalism. Somehow this logo feels minimal, while packing a ton of symbolism into it. I just find it to be so pretty, like a great fabric print. Check out the explanations of all the different little symbols in the Unilever logo! Amazing.


FedEx. Seems kinda ordinary. But once someone points out the arrow that is formed in the negative space between the E and the x, you will forever admire the simple brilliance of this logo. Here is an interview with the designer. Speaking of logos with hidden meanings.... here are some more.


I don't need to post the Apple logo. You all know what it looks like. It's a cultural damn icon. Now, have you ever seen this? The original logo? Such a huge difference!! It is so not modern or clean (though how cool would it be to have this as a tattoo? hmmmm...). The rainbow apple was the next step, followed by the simpler, monochrome apple we know now.



You knew I had to mention it. The Gap Logo redesign fiasco. Did you follow this mess? It was CRAZY. First of all, why would they change? Their old logo is simple and iconic. The new logo got brutalized by critics. For good reason. It's just weird and makes no sense. A gradation blue box? WHY? Thankfully Gap listened to the world and went back to their old logo. And int he meantime they got lots of press...

So, yeah, logos. One of my favorite things to design. If you fancy, here are some of the other logos I've designed... My main hope is that none of them end up on the Your Logo Makes Me Barf blog... hilariousness.