But there was one idea I kept coming back to. I had tried to avoid it because of the clichéd nature of it. I decided to give it a shot, after the first round concepts were rejected. After living in Orlando for almost a decade, I know first hand that it’s an inspiring city with lots of fun and entertaining elements to choose from. I wanted to capture the fun and excitement of the city but wasn’t sure which element to settle on, so I just decided to throw a different one in for each letter.

This concept unitized the different entertainment themed elements forming lower-case letters. I was most concerned about the readability of the “r”. With it being inside the “o” I was afraid people wouldn’t see it as a letter.

Once completed in Illustrator, I added a splash around the dolphin to emphasize the “r”. Even though I was very happy with the final result the client rejected it due to poor readability. When tested, people thought it read “Atlanta”. I still don’t see it, but if you’re reading this and you’re with the Convention Center and Visitor’s Bureau of Atlanta, this bad boy is available if you’re interested . . . of course, I’m only kidding. I wasn’t ready to completely give up on this concept, so I decided to change from lower-case to upper-case letters.

I scrapped the idea of using the dolphin as the “r”, but I couldn’t have the hoop without him so I moved Flipper to the top left and kept the splash. Now he was jumping more into the “o” as opposed to out of it. A flamingo would now form the letter r. With all the elements in place, I dropped black letters in behind the illustrations and placed it back on the blue field. This helped to make everything pop and poor readability was no longer an issue. This version received final approval.

Here’s some close-ups of the different elements.

Here’s the logo in use on a promo poster.

The first was created for the John Hancock Committee for the States, and the other was for Kara Collegeman Photography.

You can read more about the judges and selection progress here.

The client loved the concept which allowed me to get straight to work in Illustrator.

Once I had all my lines and shapes in place, I brought everything into photoshop to finalize and add in the dramatic atmosphere.

The original illustration lines were dropped on top and a layer style was applied just to help the edges pop. Once I had finished it in Photoshop, the left side felt a little empty, so I added in a dead tree, and a murder of crows. I left room at the top for the mast head and along the right side for the mailing address. This was presented to the client as my final draft which they were thrilled with. Best of all there were no changes needed. Final approval was given and they were sent off for printing. I was really quite happy with the final product once it arrived.

I received my copy today, and immediately flipped to page 240 where my little flame appears.

For my second concept I decided to once again play with the negative space, by using the player to form the “empty” bass. He looked like some dude you’d see in a smokey club pluckin’ some jazz. Finally for my third concept I threw out the player and decided to feature the bass more prominently. by using the word to form the image.

Feeling confident that I had covered at least one of my bass’ (the classical one . . . dah-dum-CHING) I decided to try a more edgy concept that would appeal to both types of players. Using the universal hand sign for “Rock and roll” I placed the necks of each bass on the hand. Classical on Mr. Pointer and electric on Pinky. I thought it was edgy, humorous and most importantly functional.

While the client agreed and liked it very much, it, along with the others, was ultimately rejected. However one of them did appeal with some tweaking. We took the third concept and replaced the word “bass” by filling it in with a solid image. By filling this in it not only formed half of the bass it also created the first initial “B” in the title. I added the initial “C” where the f-holes would originally be. This concept was ultimately approved.

The bison fulfilled both of these requirements and offered some real graphic possibilities. I wanted to do something completely different than the elephant and the donkey. Rather than an icon of a bison I decided to only illustrate the head (above). While the overall  feedback was positive, the client rejected them. They felt that it better suited a sports team mascot. So if you’re a the owner of a team owner and you’re looking for a mascot and logo, hit me up, these are for sale. I went back and looked at the republican and democrat logos again and decided to match them a little more closely.

These concepts were very well received. There was much discussion on whether it needed to read “TEA” or not. I felt it was important to add it since it represented a new and emerging movement. I argued it could be dropped once it had been out for a while, but ultimately the client decided to drop it. As we were finalizing everything I mentioned that I had created an additional concept but decided not to share it. Naturally, this piqued their curiosity and they asked if I would show it to them.

Had I completely hated this concept, that would have been a very dangerous thing to say, but I actually really liked the mark. The only reason I left it out was because initial reaction from others had been confusion. They asked if it was a bull preparing to charge. The client however, absolutely loved it and did not see any confusion. In fact they preferred it’s aggressive look to the more passive one. This got the final approval. The colors were specifically chosen to represent both political parties. As I stated above I did not want this to be a republican or democrat logo, but rather a logo for the people. I placed the star in the middle to unify the colors and to represent the common bond we all share, whether democrats or republicans, and that is the spirit of America (are you tearing up yet?). You never thought a logo could say all of that did you? Will my bison ever stand along side of the elephant and donkey? I don’t know, it’s not likely, given our two-party system. But I was thrilled, and honored to work on the project and I’m proud of the results. But more importantly than all of that, I got paid.