Logos
Sixteen years of marks for clients from hospitality to lifestyle, the ones that shipped and the rounds before.
Summary
Overview
Twelve marks for eleven clients, drawn over sixteen years. A hotel in Brooklyn, a bar in Casco Viejo, a law firm, a record label, a lawn care company. There is no house style running through them. Each one had to be remembered after a single look.
Challenge
Every mark answered a different brief, so none of them could borrow from the last. What they share is one test. Print, screen, and whatever the client does to them afterwards.
Process
What the client sells, and who they are standing next to.
Wide, then narrow. The rounds before are half of this page.
Picking the one that fits the market, not the one that draws best.
Rules behind each mark, because a mark with none drifts in a year.
Final Marks and Iterations
Some of these shipped. Others are directions explored during discovery, kept here because the route to a final mark is part of what the final mark is worth.
Hotel Williamsburg, New York
An H and a W stacked into one monogram. The H loses its lower half and the W sits under it as a chevron. The pair reads as a bookmark or a hanging flag before it reads as letters.
A direction from discovery.
Tantalo, Casco Viejo
A lion's face drawn as a sun inside a circle, in line and never filled. It holds at the size of a key fob. The wordmark carries a macron over the first A, which is the pronunciation and the only ornament the lockup allows itself.
Final. One hotel running a kitchen, rooms, and a roofbar, so the lockup names all three under the mark.
The Roger, New York
An R and a V interlocked in script, knocked out of a navy diamond. The diamond does the work a circle usually does, and it gives the mark an orientation. That matters on a door plate and on a luggage tag.
A direction from discovery.
Italian Kitchen, Westchester
Not a mark but a label. Three panels in terracotta, cream, and olive. The name is set in script across the join, the address small along the bottom edge.
It is built to be printed on a box. A mark for a page would have air around it; this one is a rectangle with a border.
Spectrum Label, Orlando
A waveform runs through the script and comes out the other side as the rule under it. One line does the signature and the underline and the thing the label is named for.
Final.
Kirson Fuller, Orlando
Two surnames in a high-contrast serif with a solid square between them carrying the ampersand. The square is the whole mark: it holds the pair apart at a glance and gives a letterhead something to hang on.
A direction from discovery.
Rejutane
An italic sans in two greens, leaning the way a pharmaceutical wordmark leans. A leaf turns inside a circle at the head of it, and the generic name sits small underneath.
Final.
Well Dressed Lawns
Two leaves meeting at their stems make a bow tie. The joke is the name, and the mark earns it by being a bow tie first and a pair of leaves second.
A direction from discovery, for a friend's lawn care company.
Urbn Lgnd
Stencil capitals on individual plates, each one roughened at the edge as though it has been sprayed through more than once.
The vowels are gone from the name and the plates are what hold it together, so the mark is set and not drawn.
Peaceful Park, First Direction
A square frame holding two hills, a cloud, and a band of sky. The frame is the mark as much as the drawing is, because it makes a picture into a badge.
Peaceful Park, Second Direction
A second direction takes the frame away and adds two trees. The mark loosens into an illustration, which reads better large and gives up the badge.
Showing both is the point of a collection like this. They are two answers to one brief, and the pair says more about the problem than either says alone.
Greek Doors
A meander, the Greek key, folded until it closes into a G inside a rounded square. One continuous line does the pattern, the letter, and the door.
