Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
Design Process: FBC Albany Youth
Sunday, July 13th, 2008
I’m excited to post another logo design process…not just because it’s been awhile, but also because this one stretched me a bit.
There are many times that I’ve designed a logo, fully expecting that the first and strongest idea was going to be “the one”. The client says, “awesome” and it’s done. It’s not just that it was pretty good, it’s that I felt really good about it, even days after it was done. You know that feeling?
Brian Scott, Minister to Students at First Baptist Albany had a really good idea of what he wanted the student ministry to portray. Namely, that “The
Student Ministry of FBC Albany exists to impact students with the challenge
of full devotion to Jesus Christ everyday, everywhere, and everyway.”
Clear enough…and a dream for a designer. It’s rare to get someone with such a solid idea of what they want.
So after the first few sketches, I came up with the comps below. These ideas really tried to grab hold of students impacting other students and impacting their world. I thought I’d captured that idea in a few of these drafts.
I LOVED the “impacted” logo at mid left, where the letters were cut into the ground visually. It was something I hadn’t seen or tried before. If that one didn’t fly, I thought, surely the “radio waves” in the lower center were a sure winner…simple idea, minimal. I thought both of them were good visual representations of making an impact on the world. I sent them off thinking we surely had our logo done.
Not quite. Brian had some visual ideas, asking for something more bold than thin, and something that relied more on an icon, which neither solution did.
I thought I might take the “radio waves” idea and take it somewhere else, maybe something with a bit more passion, a bit more abandon. I thought, too, of painting or ink, and how it “leaves a mark” on paper or whatever else it touches. So after playing around with a font that provided a nice anchor for an icon element, I arrived at this version:
Again…thought I was totally done.
Not just yet.
Brian asked if we could combine some of the iconic elements into a text icon…something that would be a bit more unified, specifically the T of impact into a cross element and the ink/paint/radio waves icon into more of an oval shape, with the text overlaying it.
That’s when we arrived at this:
Both Brian and I felt we were most likely done at this point, but he wanted to check with his students and get their feedback. I figured the kids would likely respond to the grunginess of the logo and the rough, unfinished edges, etc. I mean, this would look great on a t-shirt, right?
I underestimated the youth at FBC Albany, apparently.
Their first question about the logo was, “Is this representing something? What does it mean? What does it say about us?”
I was a little taken aback, and pretty impressed, too. The kids wanted to see more of a literal interpretation of the world in the logo…something they could point to as a mission. I was happy to oblige, and by this time, Brian had sent over a few swatches of the colors in the youth room to incorporate into the logo.
So the final product looked like this:
I don’t know if it’s the best “solution” for the group or the most original, but the cool thing is that the group took ownership of it, you know? And that’s a cool thing to be a part of. I really enjoyed working on this one. Hope you like it, too…
Oh, and a special thanks to Adobe Illustrator’s artistic brushes, without whom this would’ve taken INFINITELY longer than it did.
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