Hello, I am Rebecca Doyle, one of the 2020 Summer Interns at Harford Designs. These first few weeks have presented me with some great challenges and exciting client work.
As a Graphic Design Major, I am most interested in visuals, and I have been able to work with Jessica on two logo projects. Each of these projects has reminded me how satisfying and exciting the journey of a logo can be.
I will be sharing the process of one of my favorite projects, the Mother Crushers logo. This project was an illustration challenge that allowed me to combine my fine art skills with some digital design work.
Our client requested a logo for their in-home bar, which they intended to present as a Father’s Day gift.
They wanted a mascot-like orange, juicing a grapefruit, as their symbol. I was thrilled to hear about their request since I could already tell this was going to be a wonderfully fun and heartfelt logo.
The Sketch
As I began, I knew I wanted to give this little orange all kinds of personality that the clients would enjoy. I started by sketching some facial expressions, then moved on to some larger composition sketches that played with the physicality of the orange and the placement of the juicer.
Once I sent these over to Jessica and received some feedback, I was ready to go digital.
Going Digital
I opened Illustrator and got started tracing my drawing to create a clean vector image. Once the images were traced, I made additional adjustments to really bring this vivacious character to life.
Then, it was time to play with color. I added more contrast to my color palette and added some secondary shades to use for highlights and detail work.
Since I had a strong sense of the image, I could play with variations of facial expression to help the character come alive before the client’s eyes.
Now confident with my logo mark, it was time to play with type.
Typography Time
I wanted to be very particular when it came to selecting a font because this would give my little orange character, that I had grown so fond of, a voice.
Type is a vessel through which to tell the viewer how they should feel about your client’s workplace; it communicates the mood and intention.
For Mother Crusher’s I wanted to use a typeface that felt handcrafted and homemade while retaining the gritty voice of the clever name. So, after sampling a few different fonts, I settled on the final.
Then, I needed to find a simple clean typeface to pair with this character-filled font to give the logo mark balance and maintain a sense of professionalism.
Now that I found my pairing, I needed to finalize the composition.
Creating Composition
I first looked at my finalized image to determine how to successfully arrange my type around it in a natural way. This was going to be used on t-shirts and koozies. I needed to also think about the importance of its future placement and how that should affect my design.
After playing around with it, I decided on a circular composition that could easily be used by the clients for different purposes.
Finalizing
Now that I felt confident with my composition, I sent my designs to Jessica, who made the final adjustments for the client—and there it was! We had our completed logo ready to go.
This journey was full of many little steps, all necessary, to create the great piece we ended up with. From teamwork to technical work, this experience was a blast I am so glad to share it with you.
