Hey there, I’m back with Part 2 of my post on how I developed the new CourseCraft logo! If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you should check it out. Let’s just get into it: I left off with a couple pages of rough, ugly sketches… So what did I do next?
I started creating simple prototypes of each logo design using Illustrator. If you don’t have Illustrator, any vector design program will do just fine. Just so I wasn’t swayed in one direction by the colour of the logo, I kept each prototype grey. That way I wasn’t wasting time on colouring a logo that I didn’t want either.
After putting together 6 of my favourite designs, I walked away from the computer and just gave myself time to think about. (Another great piece of advice from Laurie!) Over the next couple days, I came back to the designs several times and tried to figure out which one would be best for us. I eventually settled on the one in the bottom right corner. To me, it symbolizes ‘bring poeple together’ and ‘making connections’ (remember the list of words from part 1?) but not in a hand-holding obvious way. But it wasn’t quite right yet.
Looking to make the logo a bit more fun I changed the plain squares to these wonky pebble shapes and added some colour. Immediately, all I could think of was babies and children. It would be a cute logo for a daycare, but not for CourseCraft. This is when going back to the list I made about the logos I liked came in handy. One of the items on the list was ‘two-tone’ so I changed the colours to something a little more mature adjusted the square shape again so they weren’t just boring squares but also didn’t remind me of a kid’s cereal.
Now I could feel I was getting a lot closer, but although I liked the two-tone design it was going in the direction of a very corporate looking logo. Again, I consulted my list and realized I was leaving out one of my favourite attributes: the line drawing style. I re-jiggered the design again and came up with a few more concepts and really started to like the last one.
And there you have it, the new logo was born! Maybe I’m just really hesitant when it comes to changes, but you can probably guess what I did next. Yep, sat on it for another week. Changing the whole site’s branding was going to be a lot of work, so I didn’t want to rush into something too soon. If you’re just changing the logo on your blog I don’t think you need to be this snail-paced. Not only did I have change the logo everywhere on the site, but also in emails, screenshots, the help section, about a dozen ads, our Twitter avatar, etc. It was no small feat, so I’m happy to present you with the final logo now!
So here’s a bit about the new logo and why it is the way it is. I ended up going with a blue and green colour scheme because I liked how it was a colour combo found in nature and I think it’s easy on the eye and not too trendy. The colours are also light enough that they look good on a white background and a dark background. I also wanted to make sure it was low-key and not too crazy because CourseCraft isn’t about me, it’s about your courses and I wanted your courses to be the main feature on the page not a crazy logo and colour scheme.
When it came to the text of the logo, I tried about a million different fonts. I won’t bore you with that since I think it’s more about what looks good to you. Again, I just tried to keep it simple and not too trendy. Since CourseCraft is two words, I used colour and a fun small caps style for ‘craft’ to make it easy to read.
If you made it through that whole post without falling asleep, I applaud you. And if you made it through and found it interesting, let’s be friends ok? I’d love to hear about your logo triumphs and failures. Let’s chat in the comments. 🙂
