The Symbol Project – Branding System Development

An alternative method to creating logos that makes better branding systems. Concept mark for Beveridge and Diamond.

The Beveridge and Diamond concept mark is the culmination of a very long project resulting in a conceptual logo for a local company or organization. This is certainly not your typical logo development process. As I’m sure you’ll see it’s a little over the top.

Description

In relation to a project from Bernard Canniffe in GD2 this semester we were given a list of 35 words. Simple enough right?

From that we were to ‘free associate’ a list of 50 words so that we were now working with a pool of 1750 words all randomly generated by out pre-existing mental associations.

For each and every one of those 1750 words we were to draw a symbol. A simple thumbnail with a few lines that represented the words and ideas we generated. Andy has a post about the process for this same project.

With close to 2000 .5″x.5″ drawings we were then to pick 4 – just 4- of them to develop further. After weeding through 1750 tiny drawings and developing 4 in the form of vectors (as Andy has here ) we chose 1 final design.

The thumbnail I went with is generated by the freely associated word, ‘Penguin‘ whose root word (from the original 35) was ‘Law.’

Our final symbol was then perfected and then applied to a local company or organization of our choosing. I chose a law firm for obvious reasons but more specifically, one that dealt with environmental issues. That law firm was Beveridge and Diamond ( this is a conceptual logo designed for them, not their actual logo ).

Goals

The goals of the project are to generate an interesting and unique symbol from the long and complicated process, find a company to apply it to, and then develop a branding system from that.

The pieces of material we could design varied based on the companies but for a law firm I thought it appropriate to design a business card, letter head, envelope, invoice, and a notepad ( for writing settlements on, perhaps ).

Concept

My symbol combines the ideas of “Law” and “Penguin” simply. The penguin stands on the left, only the black parts of the penguin show and his white stomach obscures part of a briefcase, tying into the law firm aspect of the mark. The mark plays with the penguin in a suit idea as well as the environmental aspects of the law firm that I decided to apply it to.

Solution

The solution is a full concept branding system for Beveridge and Diamond as an environmental law firm. Its printed on recycled paper, off white. The mark is repeated across letterhead, invoice, business card, envelope, and notepad.

What are your thoughts? Do you tend to do an organic brainstorming process like this or are you more prone to flipping though sites like logopond and Css Remix for inspiration? Is way one better than the other?