As you can see I’ve had a re-brand. My previous logo and branding was done about 4 years ago (up until now, each re-brand has coincided with a change of address and a necessity for new business cards and stationary), and I felt it was looking dated, or perhaps I was just tired of looking at it. It was also suggested by someone close to me, that it looked a bit swastika like! Why this hadn’t been mentioned before I don’t know.
So, I have been on a little journey around those old houses and back again with ideas, options, colours, typography etc. The trouble is I’m used to working from a brief, and there’s nobody to give me a brief for my own design. You’d think it would make it easier, having the freedom do whatever I like, but it doesn’t. I feel lost in a sea of options, with no clear direction. It’s like being dropped into the middle of nowhere and told you can go wherever you like. A bit scary and discombobulating. So there is something to be said for the restraints of a tight brief after all!
My initial brainstorming involves doodling. I really can’t call it any more than that. Random ideas, somewhat unconscious, spilling out onto paper while I listen to the radio. My hand somehow connected to the depths of my brain (not that it’s deep) and pulling out strange shapes. It’s odd what happens when you doodle.
I won’t go through the full process and range of ideas I spent way too much time over. But sometimes in life you have to go through that process, to push something through and come to a point, to finally have something visually perfected in front of you, before you decide it looks too much like something else, you hate it and you have to scrap it and start again!
A bit of a re-think, a bit of inspiration, and a bit of trawling through e-bay, and a new idea is born. Sometimes modern is good, moving forward, looking to the future etc, all fine, but sometimes, once in a while, old-school is better!
Zoe Naylor design & illustration 