BRIEF
Design a logo for the new herbal beauty company Demeter Apothecary. It's important to consider usage scenarios when designing a logo, it needs to look good small, like on a business card, and large, like on a billboard. The Demeter Apothecary logo needs to include both the name 'Demeter Apothecary' as well as an illustrated icon.
BACKGROUND
Demeter Apothecary is a new herbal beauty company and they're seeking a logo design that fits their company mission and effectively represents their products. The companies founder has over two decades experience in herbalism and the beauty industry, developing products using natural ingredients free from harmful endocrine disruptors and carcinogenic preservatives. Their product range includes personal care items like lotions, soaps and bath salts, beauty items like lip balms, perfumes and body oils, and consumables like elixirs, water infusions and powdered herbs.
They've chosen to name their company after the Greek Goddess Demeter, Goddess of agriculture, because their products contain natural plant based ingredients. Their mission is to provide safe, high quality products with an ingredient list their consumers can pronounce. Demeter Apothecary seeks to provide product transparency, ethical harvest of ingredients and safe and effective products. This empowers their consumers to feel confident that they are practicing conscious capitalism with a company that keeps nature, sustainability and community at the core of their business. They intend to use their logo on their website, business cards, product packaging, employee uniforms and store signage.
PRELIMINARY REQUIREMENTS
Brainstorm (30 Words)
10 Logo Examples
20 Thumbnails
2 Roughs
Presentation
BRAINSTORM
I started my brainstorm by separating both words of the company name and listed off the things that came to mind when I thought of the word. I also branched off and thought of words that aligned with the values of the company.
LOGO EXAMPLES
Since the company chose their name from the Greek Goddess Demeter, the Goddess of agriculture, I wanted to find inspiration from companies the were able to utilize Greek mythology in their logos. I also wanted to find logos with natural elements such as plants to emphasize the company's mission to create beauty and personal care products using natural ingredients.
THUMBNAILS
Using the inspiration from the logo examples, I continued with sketching out logo ideas that followed the company's mission. I played with agricultural elements in logos, plants, Greek type, as well as other things that represent an herbal beauty company.
ROUGHS
For my two roughs I decided I wanted to play with two different types of logos. One of those logos being more of a typography focused logo and the second one being more focused on the icon and symbol rather than the type. Some feedback I got for my first rough was that from afar, the plants in between the name of the company was distracting and became a little difficult to read. Feedback from the second rough was mostly positive and was something that was a lot friendlier to scale.
DIGITAL ROUGHS
For this next phase of the project, we took our sketched drafts into the digital world. While we only had to create two digital roughs from our original sketches, I ended up experimenting with more logo variations. Since one of the main concerns for logo designs was how well it was going to scale, I played around with simpler layouts.
FEEDBACK & LOGO DECISION
When it came time for the in class progress critique, I had to decide on two concepts to present. I ended up choosing the third and fourth logos, completely scrapping the ideas from the preliminary phase. I decided that the logos I sketched out and brought into the digital roughs phase was too detailed and intricate. So I tried to simplify my ideas and thought about how they would scale onto different collaterals. The two logos I sketched out were cool concepts but, when I scaled them down to something like a business card, the logo ended up becoming unrecognizable; losing all the details I originally thought would look good.
I liked the final logo the best because I feel like it does a good job at capturing the essence of the company in a simple, recognizable, and minimalistic way. The shapes represent leaves and since Demeter is the goddess of agriculture I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate plants/nature into the logo. Since this is also a beauty company, I arranged the shapes of the plants in a way that makes it look like braided hair.
The general reception and feedback for the critique was mostly positive. The main critique for logo four was that since I was going for the braided hair look, the logo would look better if it were vertical since hair is better associated that way. For the third logo, the layout and icon looked good but, it felt a lot more medicinal rather than a beauty brand.
FINAL WORK MOCKUPS
Although the mockups weren't necessary for this project, I wanted to take it a step further and see what my design would look like if it were out in the real world.
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