Identity & Branding

LOGOS ARE THE FUN PART. IDENTITIES ARE MORE INTERESTING.

Building a graphic identity starts with loose experimentation and ends with tight implementation. We don’t stop until everyone is satisfied.

Making a logo involves multiple disciplines—art and business history, typography, iconography, contemporary trend analysis—and soft skills like presentation, patience and really listening. It requires a creative juggling of multiple concepts, client demands and artistic directions to arrive at a mark that works for you. When you get it right, you know it.

The best path is to agree on the goals of the identity and then try as many approaches as necessary to arrive at a few that deserve exploration.

Sometimes we have to go back to the drawing board and start again. Ultimately, a preferred final candidate is refined to finished art, typography and color.

But that is only the start of an identity program. Creating a consistent, repetitive environment for the new mark is imperative to its success because that is the secret to branding. To that end, a standards manual demonstrates as many instances of its use as possible while incorrect applications of the logo are presented and discouraged.

As Many as It Takes

AT AURAS we keep going until the client is satisfied and we feel we have done the best we can. Sometimes that can mean dozens of approaches:

Taking almost a year, the rebranding of Appalachian Spring, a fine arts craft store, required lots of exploration to finally find a new design that both the client and AURAS liked.

More examples from AURAS, because we don't want to you miss our mark.

Which One Would You Choose?

Designing a new identity begins with the logo—and we like to present many choices. We’ve gone back through some of our presentations and packaged some of the logo candidates. Roll over the boxes to see which ones the client chose (and what we thought of their choice). Check back every now and then; we’ll change these out for new ones and you can play the game again.

They Liked the Negative Space

A clear interactive presentation of goals made finding the right logo easier to agree upon, although FOMO meant doing a few more just to be certain. Although they liked integrating some iconic imagery like the pencil tip and the eagle, in the end the clean use of negative space was their preference.

They Wanted Their Logotype Big

We really pitched the eye in the lock bottom left, and still think it's the best one, but the client liked having their acronym the center of attention. They wanted their logo to have many iconic elements too—a shield, a lock, an "on" button and their signature colors—purple and puce. Oh, and also they wanted their name spelled out in full.

True North

A consulting firm specializing in helping colleges manage crises liked the idea of a compass as a guide, but also the idea of the North Star being a pointer in the right direction. So we combined the two ideas. Changing the color to highlight "Education Innovation" as in the upper right logo was the only change. As we often do, we developed both horizontal and vertical versions of the logo.

They Chose None of Them

Part of the new identity for this group included redoing their magazine, which, for an association that had to do with printing, looked pretty sad. But as the design proceeded, a change at the top of the organization pre-empted the project and they continued to use their old design until they recently merged with another similar group. Hmmm…maybe we ought to show them these again.