This project for a graphic design class involved creating three logos for semi-random fictitious businesses.

I created the business ideas by making lists of nouns and service businesses. Then I make a list of ten noun-service combinations, finally narrowing down to three:

After creating many hand sketches, then a number of digital sketches in Illustrator, I used a Google Form to present my results to more than 40 survey subjects for feedback. I then used the results to refine my final logos, as well as make this infographic in Illustrator:

Daisy Dry Cleaning did very well in the survey, with most respondents interpreting it correctly or close thereto.

Meteor Marketing did the worst, with some seeing the bar chart, but none clearly identifying the meteor. And no one correctly guessed the service. I attribute this to at least two factors. First, the meteor was very abstracted. Respondents interpreted it various ways, including as ice, a cloud, and an explosion. I tried to correct this in the final version by adding a more stereotypical flame tail. Second, the marketing industry itself lacks a strong symbol. It is sometimes associated with graphs or a megaphone or other images, but no one in particular. Many marketing firms rely on typography in their logo to communicate their business type. Therefore communicating the idea of marketing by images alone was a taller order than I originally thought.

Juggernaut Ballet company fell somewhere in between. Many respondents got the idea of a dancer, but more thought the business offered ballet classes than ballet performances. Some respondents noticed the strong build of the dancer, but many of those thought it communicated an accepting environment and that anyone could dance. The primary cause of failure was probably that I chose a tongue-in-cheek business idea to begin with, and it was an odd enough idea that it was hard to communicate.

In the course of the project, I also made Photoshop mockups of the logos to show how they might appear in real settings. These were created using templates available online.