Merrimack Valley Community Music School Logo

A few weeks ago, my business partner Rae at New Arts Collaborative and I were contacted by The Merrimack Valley Community Music School,  a community-based, non-profit music school that is dedicated to helping people connect through music education and performance. They were very interested in having a logo developed for the school to use on their print materials and website. We scheduled a conference call with Valerie Walton, the Executive Director to get an idea of what the school was looking for and to try to brainstorm some ideas. Valerie had sent us some links to examples of websites/logos that she liked including the Northeast Organic Farming Association (www.nofamass.org/), The Essex County Community Foundation (http://eccf.org/), and the Arlington Center for the Arts (www.acarts.org/).

Their own website was very plain and offered few clues:

During the conference it became apparent that the school needed to achieve three goals: 1) Show visually and quickly that it was a music school, 2) Distinguish itself from other music schools in the area, 3) Contain a tagline and/or visual that would convey or encapsulate their mission statement.

Some of the other goals we discussed. Easy to read, easy to use, usable in black and white or color, designed so that it can be shrunk or enlarged easily without losing quality. 

The key words that I heard during our discussion was community, an important part of their identity, and growth, both in the sense of growing the school, and in the sense of personal growth. On their website they say:

 "Music at its best brings people together and creates positive energy within a community as a common language that bonds us beyond cultural, social and economic differences. Music education is a powerful way to learn about oneself and to explore the possibilities that lie within each of us, to reach for our highest good and potential". 

One of the essential ideas was that this school was for the entire community, and could help you grow at any stage of your life, from young child to adult. This was also the key to what distinguished this school from other schools, that were geared more for training school-aged children.

I started thinking about growth metaphors. And we decided that “Growing through music” might be a good tagline. This phrase would percolate in my brain for a while.

The first thing I did after the conference call, was start researching music forms and notations. G-clefs, musical notes, stops, time notations.  I started playing around with the forms. This was the first round. A I usually do, I started designing in black and white, playing with the forms in Adobe Illustrator.

We then received feedback from Valerie, as well as the School's Director, Charles Leinbach. He thought that the emphasis should be on the words "Merrimack Valley Community" rather than on "Music School". He also didn't think that the music notations were working. However in one of her e-mails Valerie suggested trying; "Bass (or F clef) and Treble (or G clef) Bass is lower and treble is higher as they sit on the GRAND STAFF A music chord (or arpeggio or phrase) often is thought of as going from low to high.  I wonder about a plant or vine somehow growing up the grand staff. Possibly too complicated."

 The idea of a growing plant seemed to fit, especially as one of their preferred colors was green. Then I came across this image of a note:

It struck me how leaf-like the flag on the top of the note appeared. That got me to thinking about the base of the note being like a seed-pod. I had a bit of a eureka moment. The image literally came to me in my sleep. Upon waking, I did a quick sketch in my notepad. 

Developing that idea, this is what I came up with this for the second round:

I wanted to make sure that the client was clear on the intended metaphor and added the notations explaining the components as extra insurance. We sent these off, and the feedback was positive.
They really liked the central idea. Now it was refining the text, positioning and color.

 The biggest problem was integrating the text. One of the reasons I wanted to emphasize  "Music School" instead of "Merrimack Valley Community" was because of the length of that text. "Music School" is nice and short. So I had to play around with it a bit to get it to work. The client also wanted to lose the "berries", and preferred the stalk of the musical note/plant, to break both the "ground" it was placed into as well as the frame it was contained in. Here is round 3.

I have developed both a vertical as well as a horizontally-oriented  version of the logo. I have also selected a complementary orange color to go with the green. The colors were Pantone 1375 (orange), Pantone 349 (dark green) and Pantone 376 (light green).
As usual I developed the logo to be modular, comprised of a logo-mark, and a word-mark, which can be used together or separately in different configurations. This allows the most flexibility in application.

Here is the guide I developed showing the final logo.

The client was very happy with the result.

Neil Plumbing Logo

I recently developed a logo for local plumber and friend Jonathan Neil. He is a Christian and was looking for a logo that would not only speak to his new plumbing business, but would also reflect his values and belief that his excellence as a plumber not only serve the customers needs, but honor God.
With plumbing we knew that there would be water imagery, but we wanted to avoid the usual images of pipe wrenches,  drains, sinks, toilets or bathtubs. Jon and I discussed Bible stories and images that involved water vessels and service. I looked at water-related images ranging from Aquarius symbols to images of ancient middle-eastern water vessels. One image that caught my attention was a painting illustrating the Biblical story of Rebekah at the well.

I liked the feeling of the image, but realized it was too complex to make an effective logo, however after seeing this album cover for Come to the Living Water.

I decided that focusing on the hands would be the key. The client liked the idea and I produced a sketch in pencil and marker.

The client liked the sketch of the hands pouring water from a simple wooden bowl. It was a simple strong image which represented plumbing in a masculine, un-clichéd way but also referenced a biblical tradition of service. I proceeded with redrawing it in Illustrator, trying some different styles and colors, however when I refined the sketch in Illustrator it lost some of it's energy.

After reviewing these Jon and I decided that the original sketch, although it had a less refined line, had a rugged quality that we actually liked better. I went back to the original sketch and I re-did the drawing careful to keep the rougher, wood-cutty look of the original sketch.
I produced what ended up being very close to the final version of the logomark.

Then it was on to incorporating the logomark with text and laying out the actual business card. There was some discussion of what to call the company, at first it was Jonathan Neil Plumbing, but we decided his first name seemed unnecessary. So then it was just Neil Plumbing. I developed this simple lock-up with the type, a clean, strong, bold, sans-serif face.

Then he decided it should say plumbing and heating. Then there was the finalizing the exact color blue for the final card. Blue was a given from the client from the start, but what shade? We went with a Pantone 285, a kind of softer, pastel blue.  After some minor tweaks, this is the design I came up with for the final card. It was printed on uncoated stock with rounded corners. So far the reaction from the client and his customers has been positive.

Front of card

Back of card

LOGO development: Christ The Rock Fellowship

Here is a logo-design project I finished recently. A logo for a church in Worcester, MA. The process took a couple of months. The client said they preferred a square logo and wanted it to contain the basic motifs of the cross, some interpretation of "the rock" and the look of either in color or in shape, of the churches stained-glass windows. Here are my initial sketches. I like sketching out ideas with pen and paper before I get into working it on the computer. I think it gives you a better feel for the logo, and keeps you from getting locked in to a particular font or color too soon. You can see that I came up with the basic workable idea in the first round of sketches.



Here is a photo of one of the churches' windows.



The next step was to refine the sketches, as you can see, I had the name wrong on the initial sketches, it was "Christ the Rock Fellowship", not "Christ of the Rock Church"
I tried a variety of colors, and used some fonts that I though would be good choices given the church is a fairly conservative entity.




Although the client's stated preference was for a square logo, I felt that a more horizontal orientation could also work, and included it in the first round.
The following rounds were refinements in font choice, color, and the relationships between the component elements.



The client had trouble choosing between the square version and the more linear version, and asked me to refine both of them.



This is the final round. The client decided that they really liked both of the logos, and wanted to use both of them for different applications.