A new brand identity for Jujama

This project was not part of my Design Challenge. However, I thought I’d catalog this project here as I was the primary designer working on it, with help from Jujama’s designer Lindsey Jamieson.

Jujama is a nearly 10-year-old business (and my current employer) with global clients and a sophisticated product that services top-tier customers. The overall goal of the rebranding was to bring forward some element from the old logo – in this case, the “handshake” – and add energy, a more dynamic color pallet, and have the logo and mark be far more versatile than the old one.

I started by sketching all sorts of ideas. Since Jujama offers a product to event management companies I used event-related iconography like lanyards, chat bubbles, audiences. I also tried several iterations using a recognizable J letterform but ultimately moved away from that concept.

Once I was in Illustrator I went wild on a few of these ideas – trying my best to find their edges. A few of them I spent multiple days with, trying to see if any of them had longevity. Here are a few of those.

Then, one day, while working with Lindsey on pulling forward the handshake concept I deleted one of the people in the handshake. And, there it was. Our new mark. It took several more weeks of tweaking the paths, the square, the edges, and settling on a type before we ended up with the above result.

Thanks also goes to Kyle Ruane, who I sent a version of this to, that provided some really key feedback as he always does.

This was a really fun project and I can’t wait to see how Jujama’s brand saturates this industry over the next few years.

May 24, 2018

A new badge for Lackawanna Astronomical Society

This post is in a series I call The Grand Brand Design Challenge where I’m trying to flex my muscles in brand design.

The Lackawanna Astronomical Society is a club membership for astronomical enthusiasts in the county that I live in. I frequent one of the observatories that they use for their events. When I saw that their badge was long out-of-date, and inconsistent on several of their print-outs, I knew this would be the perfect candidate for my design challenge series.

I skipped the sketching phase of this project because I knew immediately what I wanted to do. I planned to recreate their current badge, bring it up-to-date, improve on a few small things, and then provide several options. And I wanted to do so in the least amount of time possible. I was able to complete this in about an hour. I still have a few things I may clean up if I revisit this project (I’m sure if you have good eyes you can see those things).

One improvement on their current badge that I knew I’d do right away was improve readability. The dates and text “observing fifty years” tagline are both out-of-date and tough to read. So I simplified that to just “since 1958”. I thought about remarking that it was now 60 years but that would limit the use of this badge. Another thing I wanted to improve was the LAS type. Clearly they attempted to mimic the old NASA logo so I just went all the way with that and did it.

Here are the variations that I created.

I added the additional simplified icon so they could use it in contexts where the text would get too small to read. I think if I revisit this project in the future I’d simplify it even more.

I’m super happy with how this turned out.

May 11, 2018

A logo for 570 DRONE

My friend Frank, who recently loaned me his sweet goggles, has a small aerial footage company called 570 DRONE. Essentially he’s officially certified to fly an UAV professionally. He uses his drone a lot for real estate and also to capture the local area.

I decided, as part of my design challenge, to give him a simple brand identity for his business.

My goal with this identity was to stay away from any clichéd tropes that you see in a lot of these companies. Frank’s business is so easy to understand what it is – 570 DRONE (literally our local area code plus the word drone). So I didn’t want any drone shapes or propellers or anything in it (although I did sketch a few ideas like that)

Here are my really quick sketches:

And here is an artboard or two with random bits and pieces of me trying different ideas and abandoning them.

This process is always fun. I never know what is going to come out of it. And in this particular instance the final logo isn’t anything that originally came from the sketch but from this process of fooling around in Illustrator.

Here is the final logo that I came up with:

Again, I chose something simple because the brand is in the name and the colors I chose were due to him working on construction sites a lot. I also made black and white and inverted versions for him.

Some things I’d like to improve on for next time: I’d like to record my sketching and illustrating and do a video with voice over explaining some of the decisions I’ve made along the way.

Would you like a logo on the cheap? Get in touch.

April 30, 2018