Creating a Logo - Shape & Texture Challenge

I thought it would be a good time to share what I've been up to recently. I've been working on a logo for a furniture business in Florida called Coastal Distressed Furniture (Click here for a sneak peak into their production). The business produces some of the cutest refurbished/re-purposed furniture. I love an eclectic mix of old and new furniture around the home, but most of all something with character. When the opportunity to create a logo came along, I was happy to get to work on it.

Sharing the experience from the design perspective, at times we encounter the complexity of figuring the best way to condense a long business name into a smaller shape. When presented with this type of challenge, it helps to practice a good amount of concept development before committing to even the rough drafts that I'll show the client. In this particular case, the exploration of different shapes and sizes was necessary to break up the length of the business name and add emphasis on what they were marketing (which is always a goal). Doing a general search for similar businesses on the web, you'll often see the best of designs and the worst. It helped me to get a grasp on the competition and present the client with better solutions. As a recent graduate of graphic design, I can't stress how important this phase of design is. It was something that I never understood prior to my education, exploration and research is the foundation of a good design. The more you dedicate to sketching those initial shapes, the better the end result can be. In school we were asked to sketch twenty to forty sketches at times. It pushed me to such extremes at times I began to break out of my comfort zone. I think that was where I really "began" to understand what graphic design was about (but this is an ever evolving process). Later I'll share more about the other important things that factored into becoming a graphic designer from a fine art background. But that's another post for another day.

These are the initial shapes and fonts I decided to present CDF with. The key was breaking the name into a visual experience that a potential customer would find attractive, but also informative on a visual and even (suggestive of) tactile sense. Being that CDF works with texture, it was something important to get across in the logo. I played with shape, font weight, iconic imagery, overlapping, tension, and even allowed myself to experiment with customizing fonts. Limiting nothing and exploring as many possibilities allowed me to have fun and come up with several options.

The next step was converting the elements into a finished logo based on client feedback. What worked for CDF was a centered visual versus a split or asymmetric shape. Using that information along with added font customization, here's how the finished package came out. We also explored color options and possibly using the logo against a dark background (which could easily be used for a sign). 

For a furniture event, Coastal Distressed Furniture made a sign to hang over their space. It was great to see the finished product in print! Additional kerning was needed for readability at a distance.

So there is the latest project. I look forward to sharing more.