Hi! I made a logo for treemanJAKE, my illustration and design business. With the help of this class and other Skillshares, I have been really concentrating on branding my business, narrowing the focus of my illustrations (which previously were all over the board in terms of style, subject etc.) and developing a business plan.

My mission is to design fun and playful products that celebrate nerd and geek culture and encourage the relentless pursuit of knowledge :-)

STEP 1: Consider the Usage

My logo will be digitally used in a number of places: my website, social media, icons/profile pics for various websites, watermarks on my illustrations and headers for print on demand sites.

I will also need to print it on business cards, merchandise tags and banners/displays that I will need for all of the craft shows/conventions that I dream of attending.

Because I plan to display my logo in so many different ways, I intend to create a few different versions that I can use for different purposes.

STEP 2: Get Inspired

I love simple, bold designs. I also really like black and white designs with bright punches of color. I looked at tons of logos and found some really fantastic and inspiring ones...

Here is a sample of the inspiration I found for my moodboard:

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 1 - student project

I found some really fun logos and I actually started to get worried that I wouldn't be able to create something that I liked as much as some of the other logos that I found :-)

STEP 3: The symbol

I started working on the symbol before playing with typography because I envisioned my symbol as a huge part of my branding and thought that I would probably use it alone in a lot of cases.

I played with dozens and dozens of ideas before deciding on the one that I liked. I started playing with a little nerdy guy peeking out from over top of a treemanJAKE banner... but then decided that it wouldn't work very well as a small icon or social media profile picture. Then I started playing with a simple face with glasses.

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 2 - student project

The sketching was really fun at first but then I got super frustrated. Nothing was working and I was totally stuck. I learned that it is REALLY important to walk away and take a break sometimes. I went to pick up my kids from school and voila! a new idea just popped into my head and I had direction again :-)

Once I had an idea of where I wanted to go with my symbol, I went into illustrator and started playing around there. Here are 3 different versions that drafted. The middle one ended up being my favorite.

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 3 - student project

Step 4: Typography

Once I had an idea of what I wanted my symbol to be, I started looking at typography. I needed something simple and bold that would not be overshadowed by the bold look of my symbol.

Here are some of the typefaces and configurations that I tried:

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 4 - student project

I eventually decided that I liked the Code Pro Demo typeface the best. I will also be using Century Gothic for general text because I already use it for everything in my daily life and I absolutely love it for some reason.

Step 5: Scaleability

I think that my logo choices will work really well on both small and large scale. If I need something very small for social media or something similar, I could probably just use the symbol by itself. For larger pieces, I can use a combination of both my symbol and logotype.

Step 6: Color Palette

I had a difficult time deciding on the colors that I wanted to use. I wanted something fun and bold... and fairly gender neutral. My target customer base is geek guys and girls so I don't want to exclude either side by making the colors either too masculine or too feminine (although I will be the first one to tell you that guys and girls should like whatever colors they want to like and to completely disregard "societal norms" on color preferences :-)

I limited the logo to 3 colors: black, white and orange. I added a few more colors for the website and then a few more for my general designs. I create a lot of things in just black and white (with an occassional hint of color) so I think that my brand color palette will work for almost anything that I create.

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 5 - student project

Step 7: Finalizing your Logo

Here are the final versions of my logo...

Going left to right in the picture below, I have the icon by itself and then the main logo with the symbol and typeface going in a horizontal direction.

Below the 2 main logo versions, I made a couple versions with a box around the logo. These versions will probably be used less but I'm thinking that there might be some cases where I would need a more enclosed version of the logo for perhaps a tag or when the background color of the piece I'm printing on is white instead of black.

Finally, I made a black and white version of the logo that I could easily use as a watermark on my illustrations or somewhere else where the yellow/orange color would end up being a distraction.

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 6 - student project

Developing my Visual Entitiy:

I have a long way to go on this process but I feel like I'm definitely making progress!

My favorite brands:

When I think of my favorite brands, I immediately think of 3 of my favorite artists. Each of these people have done a fabulous job creating a cohesive body of work and they are really inspiring...

1) The first one is Helen Dardik. http://www.orangeyoulucky.blogspot.com/. She creates these amazingly beautiful and colorful illustrations and I can immediately identify her work based on the style, color palette and just general awesomeness of it all :-)

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 7 - student project

2) The second one is Elise Gravel. http://www.elisegravel.com. She is absolutely amazing too and her style is so unique and identifiable. I love, love, love everything that she does and I think that she has gone a fabulous job creating a visual identify for herself.

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 8 - student project

3) Last by not least is Jon Burgerman. http://jonburgerman.com/ His colorful doodles are amazing and his visual identify couldn't be any clearer. I love Jon Burgerman. Even though he is always creating tons of these little unique and different characters, his fun style and bright colors work brilliantly to bring it all together into one body of work. Did I mention that I love Jon Burgerman? :-)

Logo for treemanJAKE - image 9 - student project

Thanks for reading through my project and thanks for this class!

I'm really excited about my logo and can't wait to continue working on my branding and business plans. Any feedback or comments would be more than welcome :-)

Edie Hernandez

Feed your Nerd. Find your Happies.

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