I recently designed a new logo for a local photographer working in the Sumner County & surrounding areas. I worked with this client before at a former job but he is branching out now by opening his own new photography business. He had previously made his own logo and wanted me to redesign it for him. He was in need of a professional logo to properly start the business and create his identity. I was glad to help him out. In addition to revamping his old logo, I wanted to explore a couple extra concept options to show him. I will demonstrate here the creative process in which his final logo for Mark Griffith Photography was created.
As with most other projects, I created several different concept ideas to show the client:
- Using the company’s initials
- A photography element
- A cartoonish, fun revamp of the client’s original logo
The main elements the client told me he wanted the logo to signify were: kid-friendly, quality service and honesty. He also wanted to use primary colors as he mainly shoots portraits of young children.
With these elements in mind, I began sketching ideas for his logo. I began with the initial concept of making a logo using the company’s initials.
I liked these sketches from the start and then enhanced these concepts further. The first logo concept sketch advanced to this stage but for whatever reason, it just never connected with me. I liked the initial sketch but the developed version just didn’t cut it. Oh well, it happens. However , it did lead to this next idea which I really did like and actually presented the rough design to the client as one of the concepts.
The other sketch went through several versions but I will show the version I settled with in which I isolated the “g” and it went from a simple typographic mark to a detailed lens inside the “g”, then to a more 3D “g” with some perspective to lay it flat. This was another presentation logo rough given to the client.
Next I worked on a concept idea that the client came up with and actually used previously. His wish was to upgrade this logo. So, I just revamped this idea into another logo rough.
This concept consisted of a camera on a tripod with a smiley face in place of the lens. These were elements he wanted to keep. In all of these concepts below I went with the traditional yellow and black smiley face. One trick to this logo was making the smiley face stand out even with it being the smallest element by default. The tripod on the other hand seemed to be the least significant element and was also the biggest one. So, to remedy that, I used negative space for the tripod and oversized the camera so the face in the lens wouldn’t be so small. I also threw in a version without the negatively spaced tripod. Here are some of the early design concepts for this:
I tried some versions in which I left the tripod off in order to make the camera and smiley face even bigger. Here are a couple of them:
In order to really demonstrate the kid-friendliness of the logo, I tried these concepts above in a “crayon” style.
This is the logo the client chose:
In the end I am quite proud of this logo. It has all the elements he wanted from the start and it is really different from some of the other logos I have done.
Thank you Mark for your business and I hope your new venture goes well!
