Rethinking Economics
The Quest For a New Logo
Hey everyone,
my name is Lukas and I will be working on your new logo and general branding.
We will be doing about three rounds of designing and feedback. More if needed, but it can be done in less as well, depending on how happy you are with the results.
In this first round I have outlined some stylistically different concepts. Tell me which logo represents RE best in your opinion and I will get into the details in round two.
You will see some rough edges and downright design mistakes in the pictures here. I want to avoid putting hours into fine tuning designs that will get scrapped in the end.
I will state my personal opinion as well of course, so you will probably be biased but hey: I’ve been doing this stuff for a living quite some time so maybe you want to hear my thoughts 😉
There is a feedback form at the end of this page.
Have fun!
Very first drafts
The idea here is to visually seperate the thinking of Rethinking. The black one is not an option of course, but I do like the way thinking economics is instantly readable, so that may be a concept worth exploring.
For the second one I was looking for a third color to accompany the primary two rethinking colors and I am pretty happy with this green and it will probably make its way into the final branding in one way or the other.
A head could be a way?
Yeeah, I think you get the idea. Bright head, looking forward, colors ideas etc. etc.
But thus far I am not happy at all with the results. It feels like there could be something worthwile in this idea. So if surprisingly a lot of you decide that this is a cool visual metaphor I might be able to make explore this further and find something aesthetically pleasing in the end, but no guarantees.
Getting somewhere
No visual metaphor but straightforward and memorable. Typography can be added in a lot of ways.
The small greyish outline is a rendering bug, not a feature.
Badges
Classic rectangle form, the ‘ol reliable of Logos. Works in nearly all contexts, in black and white, on different colors backgrounds etc. etc. Signals seriousness.
I think the lightbulb might already be a tad too much for a real simplistic look.
But I do like the inverse box shadow effect A LOT. It makes the logo interesting and stand out, without adding too much unecessary complexity. Also it is a perfect design element as this inverse shadowing is recognizable with different colors and can be easily applied to websites and used in design tools without much experience. When used in webdesign it is lightweight as well so you will get a performant website.
Thinking in Circles
Talking Economics
In my opinion the letters RE should be used in the Logo, there is no need for a single non letter shape to represent your brand, like the Twitter bird or the Apple apple. The topic of economics is broad and quite abstract and I do not think it is helpful to try and come up with a shape that is both simple, recognizable and related to progressive economic thinking. I tried thinking in this direction a bit and the best I could come up with so far are the head thing, this light bulb here and maybe a pen or a prism.
If you absolutely want a logo that does work without the letters RE I guess I could put some more work in there, but I would not recommend it.
Though the light bulb in the speech bubble thing works quite nice with the typography, so that could be used sporadically as well for themed social media posts like “Rethinking Ideas. This week…” or something like that.
Summary
Some different roads to explore with some consistency in certain elements. I am a strong proponent of at least some incorporation of the inverse box shadow.
My vote would obviously go to one of the last three design branches. If I find some nice tweaks to the typography, Circles 1 or Circles 2 would be my favorite. Badge 3 is a close second as it’s so clean and straightforward. The Bubbles have some unexplored potential.
Anyway, let me know what you think. I will get back to work May 9th 🙂
