Pionear Identity

Through a Facebook group I was put into contact with a Business student studying at Leeds Met university who was in need of a logo for a theoretical business (a networking platform for creatives- similar to behance, linkedin etc). The logo would have to be completed over the weekend for a presentation on the Monday, so a quick development was critical. The initial idea which was delivered to me consisted of a tree with many branches, with the roots forming a heart. I explained the cons of this, being the overcomplexity, and connotations linked to a bare tree (being death). I explained how logos should be more simple in order to be scalable and more applicable, but also more memorable and understandable.

I did a quick stage of research on current logos for both social media sites and networking sites, seeing how colour, shape and imagery were used, and what attributes of the platforms were marketed.

A unique colour along with a simple vector image proved to be the most popular and memorable.  nearly all examples were based around the first letter of the platform, or a simple illustration which represented it (eg an elephant for evernote - memory).

For Pionear I felt that it would be best to produce a logo around a P, but wanted it to be easily distinguishable from the Pinterest logo. This would be done by making the logo more formal and using a different colour. It would have to work in black and white also.

I produced a series of sketches, based around the idea of a stylized P, thinking about networking, linking things together etc.

Ideas based around connections and links

Hephaestus (god of craftsmen) has a symbol of an anvil. It was too conceptual in nature to work though.

Ideas based around expanding networks

From these sketches we decided upon the Paperclip style P, but felt that it was too business like and needed to be less formal. Experimentation led to the P being turned 45 degrees to look like a mountain which tied in nicely with 'pioneer'.

I decided that an absence of colour was better and more professional, using a slightly warm black (0,0,0,97). I also swapped the font to something more bold and suitable, Futura Bold.