Logo Reflection

1.     When doing the pencil sketches, I already had the two main names of my brand and its industry. I had also known that mistakes were allowed here and that anything sketched can be finalized and polished in adobe illustrator. However, I wanted by design to be distinct and look creative. Doing some research of my brand and its competitors I knew that my logo had to seem modern but have some distinctive element. I decided to check out some design books and I picked up the designs for my seventh, eighth, and ninth designs. The rest of the designs were either icons or symbols that could be used alongside with the names "Volta" and "Motiva". I also designed the products or objects that are related to my brand such as the charging cable and the light bulb. The last design (25) which is the image on the left was just an abstract image I imagined, and thought could work but ended up being one of my digital remasters on illustrator. Perhaps I could've tried working with hierarchy by adding a phrase underneath the brand names "Motiva" and "Volta" but it hadn't occurred to me until now in the final designs. Overall, the design process was just me researching the logo styles of my competitors of the same industry, logo designs in the design books with minor alterations of my own imagination. if there was something I could do before when making these sketches is allowing myself to be inspired by more professional work and allowing myself to imagine my designs more freely.

2.     During the 5 electronic roughs I was stricter as to what I can add or alter about my designs however more or less they remained the same as the pencil sketches just more accurate to how I imagined them to look like. I also couldn't use as much color yet until I had moved on to the Two selects section. 5 variations of 5 sketches which makes it a total of 25. I mainly used different fonts and variations of shapes to make my brand logo. I had used Bauhaus, Univers 65 bold, and Helvetica since they are all modernize fonts. This process was fluent knowing that I could just copy and paste and slightly change it. This made the whole process easier and quick. The top two designs were only based on shapes rather than fonts because it seemed unique and cool for me to make these letters out of shape differentiating myself with my competitors. The results came out as desired and I appreciate the work I produced. Perhaps the Bauhaus font used for Motiva doesn't look quite right with my brand is based on and the message my brand is trying to convey. I also had to decide on a name which ended up being "Volta" after the Italian engineer Alessandro Volta who invented the battery. Since electronics use batteries to this day, I thought this name would be the most fitting and best choice. Motiva was just "Motivate" which sounds good but not as strong and as confident as Volta sounds.

3.     The 25 variations of two designs that were selected by the votes of my classmates for me to pursue and finalize. I was allowed to use color, hierarchy and add more shapes and designs to them. It still had a focus on utilizing different fonts but not as much. It had now been two selected designs with 25 variations for both of them. I sticked to Volta with the Univers 65 font and Volta with the shapes since they were the best ones, as expected. The variety just made this process of the logo design very long and arduous. The Colors and Symbols I ended up using worked better than I thought but I still remained with the Black color for the font. It did get harder when I had to use shapes for both designs which made it difficult to find out with shapes would work for the Volta logo that was made with shapes. Hierarchy wasn't as difficult since the idea had occurred to me that I could make a brand slogan and then work with hierarchy from there. These designs were better from the last since they seem more creative and innovative than the last designs since I utilized color, shape, hierarchy, and a variety of fonts. I could improve on utilizing shapes to make the name "Volta" with the Univers font stick out more and seem more appealing, but I digress. One design I adored was the battery icon, all of the variations despite the minute changes are between the five variations of the battery icon.

4.    Finally, I had to choose one out of the 50 designs that I thought was the best one for me to finalize and tweak making it the official logo of my brand. The final tweaks were just me making 10 slightly different alterations of that one logo using, kerning, leading, and tracking. It was a strenuous but totally worth the hassle. In terms of hierarchy since I had no additional text in these final designs I had to play around with the proximity of the battery icon and Volta name. I couldn't have altered much more other than those four components yet even with little I had to work with these properties can make a design seem more polished and seem "professional". A design that stood out to me was the top right in which Volta is inside of the battery which has the thunderbolt outside of the battery in order for it to seem electronic related brand or else it would arguably seem like a water bottle laying down. However, I find it to be more ingenious than the rest of my logo tweaks. Regardless, my other logo tweaks look well done in terms of executing what was intended. What was intended was to make minute changes that still manage to portray a notable difference. If there was one thing I would add to my design is a slogan, but I'm conflicted as to whether or not I should save the slogan for the future ad assignment. All that remains is to decide on which one of the final tweaks is a worthy and the permanent logo for my brand Volta.

5.    The Final design is by far the most impressive design out of all the logo I've designed throughout the entirety of this process. It is simple and yet effective. the kerning is spot on and perfectly corrects the spacing between the letters of Volta using the Univers font. The battery icon is untouched other than the fact that it is placed next to Volta like the 7th design of final tweak only that it is on the right rather than on the left. This portrays a professional, reliable, and authentic brand that you can rely on when you are in search for electronics or electronic accessories. It gives confidence and boldness to the consumer to check out my brand or at least view it. What I could work on is trying to use a different style of art for the battery or at least add a few minute details to improve the final product. I could also work on the leading for the " V " in Volta since it seems that it is slightly lower than the rest of the letters. I would be open for suggestions or critiques of my final logo to see where could I improve or fix.