Hiking for a Cause and What that Means: Logo Design
The latest in our series of postings on what hiking for a cause does to your trail preparations.
In
recent weeks we have had a few questions about our logo design, and so we
thought we would share the process of designing a campaign logo, as well as how
and why we set out our design.
In
October of 2018 (a lifetime ago now) we settled on the final draft of our
campaign logo to hike across the nation on the Trans Canada Trail. By the time we had
drafted, agreed upon, completed, and then printed our logo, we had spent
several months considering our options and drying different ideas, images, and
designs. The process was, to say the
least exhausting…
Think
of logos you know, not just the ones you are familiar with, but the ones you
instinctively and immediately recognize.
The golden arches of McDonalds, Starbucks, Apple Computers, Amazon,
Nike, Target, IBM, Penguin Books, Lego, BMW, John Deer, Air Canada, Canada Post, World Wild Life Fund,
Amnesty International…even digital organizations such as...Instagram, Twitter,
Android, Facebook – where in each case the logo has become culturally iconic. Each of these companies’ logos or decals
evokes a sense of their product, their quality, and their ideals. In fact, in each of these examples, the logos
have been so well designed and popularized, that they no longer even require
that the name of the store or brand to be included for them to be known.
Logo basics
So
having reviewed popular logos and their designs, we considered what the over
arching goal of a corporate or campaign logo should include. From our research it seems that the best
logos must:
(1) Be
simple, attractive, and memorable, or inversely not too busy or complex.
(2) Be
balanced in term of shapes, imagery, design, and colours.
(3) Rely
on the image more than text and typography – or incorporate the text if
possible.
(4) Reflect
the mission, ideals and goals of the endeavour.
(5) Make
the organization and campaign look professional and organized.
(6) Make
the campaign have a recognizable and distinct and distinct image – in person
and on social media. Is it easy to
remember? Is it re-tweetable? Is it distinct or are the elements overused
by other similar brands?
(7) Utilize
colours and design effectively, after all there are conscious and subconscious
cues which colours have on the mind. Such
logos also need to be designed to account for how a colour logo would look
after being reproduced in black and white.
Does the design still work in this instance?
(8) Stand
out on different colour backgrounds for differing websites, T-Shirts, decals
and products.
(9) Be
immediately recognizable and foster a connection between an undertaking and
those who follow it.
(10)Finally,
reflect the undertaking we were about to embark out on! In other words it had to include Hiking and
the Outdoors!
As
you can imagine, it is extremely hard to achieve all of this in one design. In fact after the first month of reworking
and reimaging I soon had the greatest respect for graphic designers and what they
do everyday.
Perhaps
our greatest challenge came in that neither of us is really a designer or
artist. While, admittedly I do have an
artistic background from my time at the Toronto Waldorf School and Sean has spent
a great deal of time as a professional photographer neither of those
experiences really helped us much for this challenge. In addition to our general lack of skill we
also both naturally had different interests and ideas.
Overall
however the central problem in designing the logo was how to highlight the hike,
our message and have it reflect both of
our interests – birding on one hand, and photography on the other – amid a trek
which would cross the entirety of Canada?
Beyond these issues we had to decide what iconic Canadian elements
should we include? How could we represent
the trail? How could we to highlight our
birding? Nature? Exploration? … in short
it was a lot to include, and ultimately some of these things just never found
their way into the final design.
Research, early drafts, and long debates
Some
of our early drafts and debates tried to include birds, binoculars, hiking
poles, the mountains of British Columbia, the grasslands of the Prairies, the Boreal
forest of Ontario and Quebec, and the lighthouses of the East Coast. We debated whether the Trans Canada Logo or
the Great Trail icon should be incorporated. We considered whether the path itself should
be overlaid onto the design. Ultimately however, a lot of our ideas went by the
wayside as either not workable or not appealing – and with them so too did many
of the concerns about what should or could be included in the design.
Soon
we settled on a list of things we definitely wanted on the logo. First and foremost we began with the notion that
the Canadian Maple Leaf – a bright beautiful red maple leaf - had to be front
and centre – that was a must! Then we
decided that we had to represent the scope of Canada’s wilderness. Finally we agreed that each of our interests
must be reflected – hence the silhouettes of the two hikers – one with
binoculars, and one with a camera.
As
we got closer to our final decision, we simplified each aspect of the design further
by removing some of the details, and colours – except for the red Maple Leaf. In the end we went with the classical
contrast between the black, white, and red colours and included our name – Come
Walk With Us – and our web address : www.comewalkwithus.online
.
Ultimately,
the entire process – like almost every step of our planning and preparations –
took far longer than we anticipated. This
meant delays in announcing our design, delays in getting it to the shirt
printer, and patch maker and ultimately a huge delay in launching our website.
In
the end however, we are very excited by the final design for the first year of
our trek!
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