This post should really be called ‘how to win £100 without really trying’ because thats basically what happened with this project. My latest project at college was all about corporate identity, specifically for a creative arts festival. I had to create a logo and branding for this festival.

If you have a blog you probably know what I’m talking about. Designing a logo is really hard because it’s so simple, think of the Twitter logo, or Facebook or Instagram. They are super simple shapes but are also instantly recognisable.

I DESIGNED A LOGO FOR A CREATIVE ARTS FESTIVAL

This branding project was a live project. We were working with a client who were working on a creative arts festival. So it was important that the work was handed in on time for it to be assessed by this team.

The logo was going to appear on posters and flyers and the winning designer would also get £100. This meant it was important to create something that looked good and would work with other pieces of art that had been designed for the creative arts festival.

Now you have to understand that I didn’t really know what I was doing going into this project, I had been unwell when we started corporate identity and so missed another project which you apparently had to do before starting on this one. But I didn’t do that and jumped straight in.

LOGO DESIGN

Now the fun thing about designing a logo is you basically start by just doodling. You draw pages and pages and pages of shapes trying to find something that will work for what the logo is to be used for.

You then take them onto the computer and edit them or use them as the basis for creating another shape. I came up with 5 logos I liked and spent a long time trying to find the right fonts and colours to go with them.

The day we were due to hand in the project I thought all I had to do was print off my final design. But my lecturer didn’t like my final design. He basically told me to go back to those original marks and look for something else.

So I scanned more marks, brought a few into the computer I liked. Cleaned them up in Illustrator and added the text. The one you see in the photo above was the logo I finally decided to go with.

By this point I was really unhappy with this logo, it took me 3 seconds to draw. I played about with it on the computer for maybe an hour and then handed it in. I didn’t like it at all. Like I left as soon as I could and avoided showing it to anyone because I was so unhappy with it.

And then two days later I get an email saying my logo had been picked as the winner. It was going to be used for this creative arts festival. Going be totally honest here, I had a tiny panic attack when I found out.