The Adventures of Cindy Li

DesignRabbit logo redesign

February 25 , 2008 11 comments

Once upon a time

I picked designrabbit.com because it was two real words for an url, this was back in 2001 (I think). Cindyli.com was taken by squatters wanting to charge money for the url and I wasn’t ready to pay their fees. Why Design Rabbit? I’m a designer born in the year of the Chinese zodiac of Rabbit. I’ve been working on a new logo design. Logos aren’t created in a day, well not all and not all of them are great if they are. Great design takes time and thought. Here’s my process....or rather what I was thinking. :::Cue scary movie music::::

Approaches to logo design

There are many approaches to how a logo comes about. Here are the ones off the top of my head. :)

• 1. Word association
• 2. What do you want to convey?
• 3. Who your audience is?
• 4. What does the word/company name mean?
• 5. How is the logo going to be viewed?
• 6. Typography



I chose to go the route of making a rabbit since it was in the name of the logo I wanted to create.

Sketching

Most of the time when I start a logo I write down what words, doodle, and get whatever pops into my mind on paper as quickly as possible. Here are two sketches I used the Apple program photo booth to take a picture, hence the grain on the image.





Typography

Typography plays a lot into a brand. Different typefaces convey different meanings. This part of developing a logo is a lot like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This logo is too bold, this logo is too soft, this logo is just right? :)
Start with just black and white so that it is basic. It’s easier to play with color when you have the form down. Another reason to create a logo in one color is for application on other websites for branding of events, or whatever. It’s like having that basic little black dress. It can always be accessorized later :).

This just added: No Comic Sans was harmed(laughing while I’m writing this) in the creation of this logo. :P

The approaches you can try are:


• Combining different fonts, weights, uppercase, lowercase. Think about the message of the brand.  Uppercase=formal, possibly yelling, strength. Lowercase=casual, relaxed
• Subtraction of the typeface to create tension between the letters

I tried a curvy font to create ears of the bunny from the rear view. “Bunny got back?” -this one was not going to make it. :) The bunny created here was from parts of that font.
The idea behind choosing this font was casual, and light hearted.





This next one I wanted to create ears using the typography. I tried all caps and bold for strength. I wanted simplicity in the lines without any descenders in the mix. The ears were going to be the main focal point for this. The stacking was awkward and needed to be worked out. I didn’t like the negative space it was creating it wasn’t balanced.





This one I was thinking that maybe playing with different weights of the words would help but it was unbalanced and the word design was too heavy for my tastes.





Then I tried another font where it was all connected and then created the rabbit this time by putting it as a stopping point between the two words. The ears are created for that exaggerated length to offset the length of the word. It was still strange because the G in it was uppercase and everything else was lowercase. I used the uppercase G so it wouldn’t have a descender.






This weight was lighter but it was too circular, the ears weren’t pronounced enough.The ears weren’t created from this font either.






Here I was playing around with the spacing of the words to see if that worked. I changed the uppercase D to a lowercase one and then started connecting the letters.






This font was a lot heavier and I liked creating the ears by cutting out the uppercase D. I wasn’t thrilled by the weight though.






This font was lighter but it didn’t have the right balance either. I used all uppercase letters for “DESIGN” to help separate the words.






This font was in the right weight level and all uppercase still for “DESIGN”. I liked the N for this font because it was simpler and I liked the rhythm of the word was getting there too.




I liked this one because it separated the two words plus the descender balanced out the two rabbit ears coming out of the b’s.




Put it away for a bit

So far all that was done in a week or so and I wanted time to think about it. The logo was where I wanted it to be but it still lacked the “ah-ha!” I stopped by the ma.gnolia office, where Larry Halff and Chris Messina were having a meeting. I wanted to show off the brand. Chris suggested I play with the bunny ears, so I did that some more and ended up with a much stronger rabbit, playful logo than I had before. :)

So here is the final one :)




Color

I wanted to keep with the playful nature of my “DesignRabbit” brand. The message was to keep it cheerful and playful.
So I started combining two bright, cheerful colors, to separate the words.




I liked this one best. :)