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 When I saw that their badge was long out-of-date, and inconsistent on several of their print-outs, I knew this would be the perfect candidate for my design challenge series.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 The dates and text “observing fifty years” tagline are both out-of-date and tough to read.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.