Build 10/30: A Silly Pass at Logo Design

⊕ show captionABOUT THE TITLE - My Epson DS-30 scanner still works! I used it to scan the pencil sketches used in this post.

There is a small farmer's market that runs from June to October in the parking lot of our downtown's public library. I've been visiting it every Sunday and getting to know the vendors and their wares. Farmer's market people are small entrpreneurs with a unique product to sell, so they're the kind of people I like to be around. I pretend I'm the farmer market cat when I go, happily visiting each stall to say hello, and it provides a wonderful boost to the start of my week.

One of the vendors, Emily, has a refreshment stand that she started at the beginning of the season with just a table and some canned drinks. I learned that she was using the farmer's market as place to build experience in a business, and week-by-week she adjusted her booth design and strategy to include other local food makers. It's been lovely to check-in every visit to see what's new!

As it's getting to the end of the downtown farmer's market season, I asked if she had an Instagram presence or a card so I could see what markets she was doing. It's one of the things on her list to do, and we got to talking about design a bit because she had tried to make a business card but was dissatisfied with font she had chosen. My curiosity piqued, I asked if she wanted some homework, to which she was agreeable, so I suggested that she:

• Think of a song that reflected how she felt about her business
• Think of a movie or scene from a movie that reflected some aspect of her business

I use questions like this when talking to design clients that don't quite have the words to articulate what's important to me. They are easy to look up and use as discussion props, and have a lot of professional art direction / production baked right into the media, which can give me a good place to startMore typical questions from the business perspective like "what are your strengths" and "who are your competitors" are in the realm of strategic design; I am more interested in the heartfelt aspects behind a business. If there isn't any, it's not a project I can get involved with. . Typically, I'll followup with my project scoping questions, but for this case I was just hoping to get an idea from Emily what she wanted from her business in a fun, conversational way.

And of course since I assigned homework, I felt that I should eat my own dog food"Eating your own dog food or "dogfooding" is the practice of using one's own products or services." wikipedia source. I follow this practice whenever I suggest an idea to someone. It's how I got started with productivity tools, in fact! and do it too. Since this Sunday is the LAST farmer's market day, I promised to present some kind of logo for my business too since we're both in the same boat. To make it less daunting, I suggested that we

• Present the most ridiculous logo that isn't the one we think it will be

The idea behind this is to have something extreme and silly to react to. It's like playing around! It's a joke we're playing on ourselves! But also it's a great reaction piece when it comes to asking ( example follows), "Hey, this is awesome and silly and I wouldn't want it on my business card because it is literally a BUTT with flowers coming out of it, but maybe flowers growing is important to me."

While I was waiting at Starbucks for an event to start nearby, I did my homework so I would have something to share on Farmer's Market Day.

First, I started by first looking at Sri's Busy Busy World to get some ideas.

⊕ show captionFigure 1. Sri's Busy Busy World depicts my emotionally-driven energy in relation to making stuff

I also considered the old marks I have used to represent myself, which I talked about in my October 15 logo identity build challenge.

⊕ show captionFigure 2. Shapes that recur in my old vector work.

Lastly, I started to answer the questions, scribbling them down on this sheet:

⊕ show captionFigure 3. Scribblings on brand and logo ideas

Rather than go into heady detail about each item here, I'll just describe the main categories and trends that emerged from about 45 minutes of doodling:

• Songs tended to be reflective, emotional, wistful, yearning
• Movie Scenes tended to be about payoff moments after seeing transformation
• Words that Vibed were derived from things that I associated with the songs and movie scenes that I wanted to be part of my vibe as a brand.
• Words of Sri-ness described aspects that I thought were part of the complexity I wanted to imply in my brand.
• Logo Sketches there were 4 of them, combining the idea of "Nutmoon" (my online role playing identity) and also ideas of DICHOTOMY IN HARMONY and NURTURE.

This gives me a framework to think with. It's a perfectly fine conceptual framework on which one can develop a logomark! But...it isn't silly...

If I had my druthers I would just make a giant cat face my logo. In fact, it could just be the middle part of Sri's Busy Busy World.

⊕ show captionFigure 4. Everything in this excerpt of Sri's Busy Busy World is something I like. I just want my logo to be a big cat face.

So...that's something for me to think about. Can I just make my logo a big cat face? With flowers and treasure around it? Somehow shaped like a potato and crackling with energy? WHY NOT but HOW???

...

This is exactly the kind of excited confusion that I like to see in a logo design session!

BUILD CHALLENGE COMMENTARY

I finished this up at 3:30PM, which is close to my target time. This gives me a few hours to do other things like wash dishes and work on my Halloween costume.

I'm also noticing that I'm getting into the rhythm of blog production, which is great. I have figured out my workflow and it's starting to feel more natural. It's good to be doing this again.

As per last weekend, I won't be posting anything. I am noting that I am much better rested today than I was last Friday, so I think that my decision to limit the work time to take the blog production time into account was a good one. At 5 posts a week for a 30-day challenge, that means there's four more weeks of this. 1/3rd of the way through!

BONUS ACHIEVEMENTS

Against all odds, I found my old Epson DS-30 scanner rotting away in a forgotten box in the basement. And it still worked after installing the drivers. There was some streaks on the scans, but running a Bounty® paper towel with some Windex® spritzed on it cleared that up. Huge win; I haven't otherwise been able to find the last 3 out of 4 things I've been looking for!!!

I discovered that the utility DropZone has an applet that will download audio from YouTube videos. I was able to grab KPOP singer Taeyeon's cover of Adele's "When We Were Young" when she was busking in Berlin. An incredibly heartfelt rendition, despite Taeyeon not being a non-English speaker. I weep every time I hear it.