Logo Design Process

Hi Mom Cards doesn't have as good a ring to it.

A lot of work and deliberation went into the logo designing process. I knew I wanted the label to be a triangle so I worked around that shape. In the beginning, I wanted to name the brand "Hi Mom Cards," because I wanted the brand to inspire the kind of feeling you have when you write a letter to your mother; heartwarming, intimate, comforting, and casual. It ended up not working out, mainly because it was difficult to put "hi" and "mom" next to each other without making them look like one word, "himom." I don't know if that means anything in a different language, so I just steered clear. It could mean something terrible.

So then I changed the name to Jot, because it connotes a causal kind of writing, and as one word with three letters, it not only sounds good to say, it's also easier to make into a brand logo. I think brand names with less often used letters seem to be more easily remembered. Letters like J, K, V, Z, X, Q, all those letters with a lot more points than other letters in Scrabble. If you say "JOT" it's more like a sound effect than a word. You have to really focus on saying it too, with the "juh" sound, the long "o" right after it, and the "t" it's a word that people will remember. That's what I think anyway. Say it with me. Jot. Jot.... Jot. JOT!

I have got pages and pages of ideation sketches, so I'm only going to post a few:

These were my loose guidelines: I wanted the logo to incorporate some kind of "recycle" element. I wanted some part of the logo to look like calligraphy or handwritten text. I also wanted the logo to be simple enough to be carved out of Speedy-Carve and be legible printed on rough paper. I wanted the logo to not be an existing font. I have been told I'm not good at graphic design in general (and I believed it), so for this project I knew I'd have to work extra hard to get something worthwhile.

The People's Court! That and Judge Judy, my guilty pleasures.

Then I came up with this, (while watching trashy tv court) and I took that, reversed it, printed it out, transferred it to the Speedball Speedy-Carve stamp, and carved it out. It's very much like a linoleum cut, except softer and easier to carve. This is the print that was made from it:

I can barely tell what it says, and I wrote it!

So! Didn't work out so great. But I keep on trying. This was one of my first attempts working with a linoleum cutter, and it was clumsy.

If you don't know what a linoleum cut or a Speedy-Carve is, here is a photo of the thing, the process, and the outcome. The Speedy-Carve has the consistency of a pink eraser, except it doesn't degrade like an eraser does. 

Round... 5? of logo ideation

Fruition!

So then after all this, I went to Facebook for a critique, and I got some good feedback. I came up with a final design pretty hastily after this, something that wasn't up for critique, but I think it was the best possible outcome. Technically I will never know if it was the best possible outcome or not, but I'm happy with it. LOOKS PRO. And I got better with the linoleum cutting after all the failed attempts!

So that's it for the logo design.