The Situation
When you start seeing several versions of your logo floating around
your office and on your website, it's a clear sign that something
is wrong! Either no one likes it and keeps trying to "fix"
it or there are no company standards for the identity system. The
end result is the same. It gives the impression of a confused, unfocused
group of people with no clear direction.
That was the dilemma facing VolunteerLEON.
The original logo was created for the website and then re-purposed
for print. Because of it's format, resizing and re-coloring were difficult
and time consuming with unreliable results. It always had to be printed
as a four-color process file, which was considerably more costly than
a one, two or three color file in the correct format would have been.
The Solution
Research existing logos and marks of other volunteer organizations
and re-design the logo for print and then re-purpose it for
the web.
Now in a perfect world, I would have chosen
to do a complete re-design to better reflect the organization and
appeal to it's 90% women based audience, but this was an ASAP project
and I took that request seriously. Four original concepts and several
revisions later, a decision was made.
The original typeface was redrawn in an illustration
program to provide a connection to the original logo. The star indicates
that VolunteerLEON is located in the state capital and that every
volunteer is a star. Unnecessary drop shadows and letter outlines
were eliminated to provide a logo suitable for every purpose from
black and white newsprint to full color billboards. A three color
version was provided as requested by the organization, although it
works just as well in one or two colors if the need to be more fiscally
conservative arises.
VolunteerLEON has recently instituted the
use of it's new identity. The logo appeared in the local daily newspaper
in conjunction with their Make a Difference initiative. Clean, clear,
solid, distinctive, relevant, memorable and cost effective.
Quality and longevity = good value. This
logo should serve them well for a good ten years.
