Nonazon Logo
NONAZON is a nonsense word I made up, loosely based on the idea of making an demo ecommerce site that was “not amazon”, so I would become familiar with the design issues. I started doing some simple layout last night, and needed a logo, so I spent a couple hours making this.
Mostly I wanted something bold and simple (no drawing :-) that nevertheless had some movement. I original started with just an N (Rockwell Extra Bold Expanded) with the red circle dot over it (sort of atomic / nuclear … think WatchMen). After screwing around with some electrical symbols, I just tilted the N 45 degrees and noticed it looked like a Z, which is the other major consonant sound in the word. I wanted to add some strange sense of polarity / duality to the logo to mirror the way the word sounds (non-a-zon, almost symmetric, but not), so I added the white dot, and then realized they could be Os…happy accident. After that it was just picking some colors and adding the slightly-surreal white surrounds; the N uses a drop block shadow, and it’s similar in width to the inner surround…it adds a subtle weighted feeling and vibrational energy that isn’t too overpowering (I think, anyway).
Color schemes: I was thinking about race cars and weird italian brands. I imagined people seeing this logo on things and wondering what the heck it was. Oil? Clothes? Food?
For a cheap 'n cheesy logo, this actually came out pretty well. I’m pleased with the balance, useful ambiguity, and slight retro-feel to it.