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.

Dogs were the inspiration for two different logo assignments. These logo concepts were ultimately rejected for much simpler designs.

Concept designs for Media Trackers

Round 1 logo concept for BGA Chicago

Round 2 logo concept for BGA Chicago

2010 Annual report

Candidate training manual

12 page retrospective of the tea party (cover detail below)

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.

The hardest part of designing the logo using the apple theme, was trying to set it a part from Apple. While working on the logo I kept wondering if audiences, not familiar with refresh would think this was only geared towards apple users. I have no idea if this played into the decision to scrap these initial concepts by the client. While they were well received, the client was a bit leery of using the apple, and even seemed to think twice about centering the logo around it.

Round two saw the apple pared down to only a slice. These concepts were overwhelmingly well received as it negated the apple concerns and looked like it belonged among the other Refresh chapters. However there was the issue of the refresh “icon”. Since they were happy with the apple slices as they were, adding the icon to them was not an option. So, I decided to play with the text. I choose “Rezland” for the main font because of it’s clean, round, modern feel. The “E’s” made perfect circles, so I chopped the diagonal line and added arrows to form the refresh icon. Another clean san-serif font, “Engravers Gothic” was chosen for the secondary font on the city name. I pulled in the red from the apple and left the “e-icons” black.

The final apple slice was decided upon with one minor tweak; loose the shadow. With that change made, the new text was added and the logo was complete. You can see the final logo in action here: www.refreshwinchester.org