All graphic designers are looking for that elusive cool logo design project, with the right client who is open enough for new ideas, that would give the designer a chance to showcase their ability or their love of certain type design. While most designers would take almost any job to pay the mortgage, but once in a while, the right project reminds them why they love what they do and its all worth it.
The right Logo Design Project
Even though there is no right or wrong project, that's all subjective, as a professional a logo designer will always find something exciting and challenging for a project to not only satisfy the client but feel satisfaction themselves.
The logo design project
Last month we were approached by one of our clients to redesign a failed attempt by another "logo design Company" who have failed to create a design anywhere near what the client expected, so we were challenged with a project we thought this is not necessarily the ideal project for us. But after some in-house brainstorm and research, we found an interesting angle to the project and started getting excited about it. But before we could get started, we needed the client to be on board with our ideas. Once we pitched the logo design concept to the client and found out he was open to our direction, we were ready to execute our ideas on paper.
Logo Design Brief
Company Name: Changing Lives
Business: Martial Arts training
Objective: Recreate an existing logo design by keeping the main theme of the logo which is a man in an attack pose. The character needs to look strong, possibly a muscular man in a perfect fighting mode. The logo will be used to promote kickboxing martial arts studio, etc.
Our design concept
After a little research, we found out almost all martial arts studios have the same design style, a semi-cartoonish figure in some martial arts or an attack pose. We understood "a character in attack mode" part of the element needed to stay the same, but design style was so overused that one more of the same form of the same artwork will not serve our clients business well. We needed a new approach.
Since Martial Arts has Asian roots, we wanted to incorporate traditional Asian cultural symbolism or style elements that would help reaffirm the Studios traditional practices. We didn't have to look too far to find the right element. We always loved Chinese Calligraphy, the black brush strokes always evoked strong, beautiful, graceful yet powerful lines and movement, what better way to show movement than a brush in motion. After a quick visit to an art store, we started practicing for a couple of hours with calligraphy brushes and black ink. After some time we starting seeing exciting textures and lines forming. We experimented with different brush sizes and brush stroke speeds to get the right amount of black strokes and a nice trail of ink in movement. Once we had enough brush strokes on paper, we scanned and digitized them and started laying out the logo. Although the character is not quite anatomically correct, the important thing was that the logo design not looks cartoonish. It was more important to embed passion in the logo design.
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