ICCR Logo Redesign
For this project, I was tasked with rebranding the local nonprofit International Center of the Capital Region.
“The International Center, based in New York’s Capital of Albany, helps the Capital Region engage with the world and promote international understanding. We serve an area that extends north to Plattsburgh, south to Westchester County, east to the borders of Vermont and Massachusetts, and west to Syracuse.”
Mark
The final logo features two faces meeting eye to eye across the world and across borders. The globe is implied by the circular form and faces acting as land masses from a distance. The borders are represented by the curved lines. The closer you are to the mark, the better you read and understand the people, just as the closer you get to people, the better you know them.
Shape and style
The overall shape of this logo is a circle to represent the world. Two faces resembling land-masses are seen in profile, one right side up, the other flipped and reflected as if the people are on opposite sides of the world. They look forward, meeting eye to eye to demonstrate that across all borders (represented by the lines of the circle) and across the world, human connection is integral to understanding one another. The profiles also balance each other. The style is illustrative to add a human quality to the design.
Primary type
The typeface featured in the wordmark is Filson Soft Black, a round and friendly sans serif with a bold weight that balances with the heaviness of the logo. The bar of each T is modified to look like a flag and the tail is pulled out to open up the form. Strokes were streamlined into the letterforms for a cleaner more modern feel. The stacked A was used as a nod at the historical aspect of the ICCR.
Secondary type
Body copy is set in Lexia, a smart slab serif excellent for print as it maintains legibility at small sizes.
Color
Promoting understanding first comes from meeting others from different cultures and backgrounds. Forming true connections comes from a place of friendliness and warmth; two defining characteristics of the color yellow.
Full Case Study: How It’s Made
Task
For my Graphic Design 3 class, I was tasked with redesigning a logo for a local nonprofit. The nonprofit I was assigned was the International Center of the Capital Region, which “…has a 50-year history of welcoming and assisting international newcomers throughout New York’s Capital Region.”
The Problem
Their branding lacked the friendly, welcoming tone that their mission proclaims. Their logo wasn’t communicating the amazing work that they do in opening a dialogue between cultures.
The Goal
To create a modern logo that reflected the ICCR’s mission and tone.
Research
I began by snooping around the ICCR’s website and social media accounts to get a feeling for the tone of voice as well as what exactly they do as an organization.
Mind Maps
Rapid association helps keep the brain movin’ and groovin’ and ensuring
that connections are made on a deeper level.
Sketching
Picking out key words from the mind maps, I start sketching. This part, to me, is always the hardest: when you’re just starting out and the possibilities are endless. I never like anything from this part of the process, which is why I like to do a morphological matrix.
Morphological Matrix
Here, I use a chart to combine different ideas and sketches helps ensure the mark has meaning to it. It also challenges me to come up with simple marks based on concepts like connection and speech.
More sketching
From there, the juices are startin’ to flow. Now, I take another shot at sketching. Sometimes I have things stuck in my head that I have to get out, so I slap that stuff down on the paper right along with my work just so I can just stop thinking about it. Half of it is utter nonsense and the other half is grinding out sketches until things start to click.
Digital
Once I start to get some decent sketches, I make those bad boys up fresh in Illustrator. From there, I start playing around more and coming up with things I couldn’t see on paper. I tend to start out super minimal and add more detail as I go. I love playing with figure/ground, so I often devote a few sketches just to see what kind of shape and form relationships I can make.
Refined Digital
Once I get down to the final concept, in this case, seeing eye to eye across borders, I do some variations on it. How does it look in a circle? A square? How do I emphasize the eye contact? Ah jeez, now it’s cyborgs. How do I emphasize eye contact without them looking like cyborgs? This is one of my favorite parts of the process. When it’s all starting to come together and feel real. There are so many ways to play and experiment, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make something weird!
Adding type
I start adding type to the best marks. This helps it start to feel real. I love looking at typefaces. They all have their own little personality- some moreso than others. I wanted this logo to feel more modern, so I decided to use a sans serif typeface. I chose Filson Soft due to its rounded letterforms and tall x-height, which gives it a very friendly and open vibe.
Finalizing
After a healthy amount of tweaking and refining, I create the lockup. Once that’s settled, I make alterations to the type so that it’s unique to the brand and not something that anyone with an Adobe account and download and type out.
Final thoughts
This was the second logo I’ve ever made and the first good one. I couldn’t have done it without Professor Leah Rico. She wouldn’t let me rest on this, and damn am I grateful. This is in my portfolio now! Thanks, Leah.
Through this project, I learned how to push myself and my concepts, to have a reason for ever little thing, and to kick ass for a good cause.
I’m proud of the work I did on this, and I can’t wait to work on more branding projects.