Rohana روحانه

Hello!
Thank you Micky for the enlightening course.
Now I’m rediscovering Paris through the scattered street signs and logos around me!

Introduction
Despite that I live in Paris, the brand/shop that I chose to work on for this project, isn’t French or situated anywhere near Paris.
I’ll be making a logotype for a yoga studio, and an artisan foods + clothing brand called Rohana, located in Cairo, Egypt.

Last year I've spent 8 months in Cairo, and one of the most precious things that I took back with me from there, was the yoga practice that I learned from Hala, the owner and creator of this studio/brand.
Back then, Hala used to give her yoga classes and hold her weekly market in different spots in central Cairo, but few months ago, she managed to get her own individual space; Rohana Studio روحانه
As you see in the photo below, the place doesn’t have a Logo yet and as far as I know, no one is working on creating one.

 Current sign

So, this logo will be my personal gratitude note to Hala and a small present for launching her new business.

About the owner
Before knowing Hala, I never imagined my self doing Yoga or even liking it, but the warmth, honesty, knowledge and positive vibes that she showers her students with, were more than convincing.

An Arabic/English Logotype is absolutely a real challenge for me, but I hope that with your feedbacks and thoughts, my mission will be easier.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tone, message and objective

TONE

Natural, balanced, positive, organic, friendly, authentic, respectful, harmony.

Brand message 


Rohana is a space dedicated to quality and respect of nature.

Objective
To build a memorable, original and easy to read bilingual logotype.

CREATIVE CONSIDERATIONS
-Arabic and English
-Rohana is an Egyptian studio, but the yoga classes are often given in English
-The logo is expected to be cursive

(I talked once with the owner about creating something for the brand in a hand lettering style)

Here are my moodboards

Sketching!

So here are the first sketches that I've done, they're absolutely very rough and messy, but at least, they helped me seeing how my intuitions look like on paper:

At the beginning, I couldn’t really find a visual connection between the Arabic and the English writing, so I was sort of blocked, I started placing the two words one on top of the other as in the street signs photos in the references.
I looked for more inspirations, I kept sketching while experimenting with all the pens and brushes I had in reach.
I noticed during the process, that the cursive lettering in English is closer to the Arabic writing cause in Arabic, we don’t have spacing between the letters, not that much at least, and after few sketches, I’ve quit writing in title case cause the capital R made the English word looks always more present than the Arabic, that was annoying, I wasn’t getting the feeling of harmony that I was seeking.
I humbled the English writing and made it all lower case, et voilà! That was it! (Or a good start at least)
Arabic writing is cursive and, there are no title case or upper case letters, words simply flow from start to end like this.
So writing the English title all in lower cases, totally made sense :)

Eventually, the annoying R became a nice humble “r” and now it's the link between the two words: روحانه and rohana.
The “r” in Arabic has the shape of a small crescent “ر”, so I think, it should be the left side of my lower cased “r”.

Updates:

I didn't like the "r" that I had, so I did some more sketching

==============================================================================

Hello again!
So this how it all ended up looking like, I hope that you'll like like (as the client actually did)
Looking forward having your feedback and comments.
A plus!
Yas

Sketch

Tracing

Kerning

Color:

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save