OUG403 - study task 01 - RE-BRANDING

We have been asked in a group of four to re-brand the cross water logo. The logo must be one of Massimo Vignelli's 6 typefaces which he said were the only ones needed in design. These are Garamond, Bardoni, Century expanded, Times Roman, Futura and Helvetica. These typefaces may be changed and altered to help communicate cross water.

The crosswater logo we were tasked to re-design.

To start the study task our group set out making a mind map to help express all our early thoughts on the logo. The mind map also helped us with understanding cross water as a company as focused us on researching what it's selling, it's company ethics and how it came across when visiting it's website. The website became the most useful tool as gave information about the company and showed us cross water's previous logo. I noticed that the cross water logo was similar to other logos I had seen such as cross country trains which uses a similar typeface and the use of an 'x' following the type. After seeing this we agreed we wanted our new logo to be unique and eye-catching to their target market which is dissimilar to their current design.

Although using a different colour scheme the logos have many similarities.

After extensively researching the website we came to the conclusion that it was important to make our design modern and professional as this was reflected throughout the company. I looked at other logos that may help inspire our final design which included those from other competitors on the market. We noticed that type in these logos flowed well and so started experimenting ourselves with designs with typefaces that gave the same impression. These were predominantly the san serif fonts: Helvetica and Futura so continued designing logo ideas with these typefaces.

I looked into the logos of other bathroom companies such as 

The idea of bathrooms and water connecting to a 'flowing' design inspired us to research further into logos with these same aspects.

The strokes between each letter work well and is something we will look to experiment on as successfully shows movement

Good use of negative space

Fluid joining of text within logo

Our first designs were basic and didn't all contain colour. This made it easier to get more designs onto paper. I tried experimenting with connecting lines and the placement of text using inspiration from earlier 'flowing' research. This developed into experimentation on illustrator. With everybody's input we collectively created some designs. Once home I drew up some more designs on illustrator to help contribute to ideas for the final design

I experimented with using the name "x water" instead of "cross water" to try expand on some design ideas. Unfortunately after doing a few experiments I decided  'x' would be too strong of a shape and wouldn't fit with the theme.

One of our original ideas.

one of my own developed ideas

Despite working well as a team towards the end of the project, at the start, we all had different opinions on how we wanted the logo to look. Everyone did different designs and it meant the final design idea was inconclusive. We decided to all sit together as a group and combine our ideas and designs to create a final logo that would successfully communicate the design. We started with a basic typeface that we had looked at when experimenting that combined both curved and flowing bowls with striking and strong looking stems.

We kept the kerning of letterforms compact as resembled the flowing of type. It also stands out due to the thickness of strokes which I thought was important in conjunction to the companies ethics. This developed into a softer logo where we changed the colour to a grey which resembled the chrome and silverware of Crosswater's products. The full stop of our first logo was changed to a water droplet to link with the brand.

The position of the water droplet was an integral part of the design. We first designed the logo so it was higher up and closer to the r so resembled a tap. After experiments and constant redesigning we decided to leave the droplet in line with the baseline of text. We also changed it to a lighter shade of grey. This represented the clarity of water from the taps which we thought would work well as is also the same colour as the added Simpsons & Bauhaus text at the bottom of the logo for the adjoining businesses. Although working well on it's own, some member of the group wanted to make some minor changes.

As a final design decision we added a fade to the logo. This wouldn't necessary work across all media such as the website as constricts the logo to a rectangle box logo which affects its legibility however on billboards or crowd barrier advertisement (where it would be seen at Leeds United) would clearly show off the company.