Logo design and content branding

This project was a rebranding we worked on together. It was important that the client knew where she wanted to end up long term so in this project it was an ongoing conversation to fully understand what the logo and the language should become.

It started as something entirely different and with market research from the both of us and we quickly learned that we can't just update the old logo, we had to drop it entirely and move into a different direction. This was hard for the both of us as I designed the old logo and we both had nostalgic feelings towards it, but it was time to say goodbye.

The new logo had to be more mature, had to communicate elegance while being approachable and the aim was to make it timeless in shape. With the business name changing to her own name, we knew the logo will become part of her identity, it was crucial for me to be a 100% sure she loved her logo. I spent hours sketching up ideas, brainstorming possibilities based on the types of logos the client found attractive while avoiding anything that was on her strictly against list, thankfully those styles were not relevant to her company - mascot and intricate ones.

The additional challenge was to make it accessible as the client has visual impairment that affects contrast, colour perception, so she fully trusted me with deciding on the logo and brand colours. The font had to be accessible both for the logo and the brand as she was going to use it daily for social media and business assets. I also had to come up with a plan to find a platform/ software that was accessible for her and was easy to learn so she wasn't reliant on a designer for daily social media content.

Keeping these in mind we narrowed down the sketches to two and then discussed the pros and cons and went with 'eva' instead of the monogram logo that was in the running too.

I used a grid system to create the letters and then fixed the 'V', as grids are just guides after all and can't account for perception. Since it was chosen symmetry was always a part of the vision and so the 'e' and the 'a' are the same shape, symbolizing unlocked padlocks resonating with her mission statement: 'Unlock your potential'.

As the client is a certified life and business coach, I chose colours communicating comfort, sincerity, trust, and self-expression. It had to look good on light backgrounds, but the main focus was to make it look best on darker backgrounds, as the brand itself was to be 'dark mode' to make it accessible for the client.

I used Affinity Designer 2 to create the logo and brand assets, used Adobe Colour to check the colour scheme for colour blindness and as Canva has dark mode integrated we introduced it to the client. It has a fast learning curve and the client is satisfied with the controls and options.