For my animal mark I decided to do a Kingfisher. I started with this reference image.

Kingfisher Mark - image 1 - student project

Kingfisher Mark - image 2 - student project

I found from my sketches that I could balance the mark with an underlying triangle.

Kingfisher Mark - image 3 - student project

Here is the "finished" mark. I added gradients to give it an extra dimension but I still feel that its a little straight forward and could do with something to make it more unique. Maybe I need a better reference image or I could take my sketches a little further. Any feedback would be welcome.

Kingfisher Mark - image 4 - student project

Ok, so after some thought on how I could improve my finished mark, I decided to try a different reference image. Since George's mark depicts a "jumping fox" I wanted an image that similarly conveyed action, and what do kingfishers do? They dive for fish. So I searched for images of "diving kingfishers" and settled on this one:

Kingfisher Mark - image 5 - student project

Kingfisher Mark - image 6 - student project

After some time sketching I discovered that I could incorporate a fish in the centre of my kingfisher in the negative space. I liked this idea of predator and prey being combined so I decided to run with it.

Kingfisher Mark - image 7 - student project

Kingfisher Mark - image 8 - student project

After some more time sketching and refining the idea I settled on this as my final sketch:

Kingfisher Mark - image 9 - student project

I folded the wings into to a more square format so that I could make it more geometric and the centre portion would appear larger and more noticeable at smaller sizes. I also makes it look as if the kingfisher is just about to hit the water.

From here I took my sketch into illustrator and used circles to build it out until I ended up with this final logo:

Kingfisher Mark - image 10 - student project

I tilted it 45 degrees to add an extra level of movement. Then I started playing around with colours, basing my colour scheme off the kingfisher's blue and orange.

Kingfisher Mark - image 11 - student project

Kingfisher Mark - image 12 - student project

At certain hues blue and orange tend to clash quite badly so I tried tints and shades and moving towards more yellow and turquoise colours.

I like how the mark works in black and how it still suggests a kingfisher without the colour cues of blue and orange.

If anyone has any advice on choosing a colour combination please let me know.

Jonathan Farrell

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