Lindsey Elwell Logo
In 2022, me and my fellow designers-in-training were tasked with branding each other. We were put in randomly assigned pairs, and each person had to create a logo and brand design that perfectly summed up and captured the personality of the other. Because we were randomly assigned, we all had to start at essentially square one and first get to know each other as people.
Concept Development and Exploration
The way we speedran getting to know each other was via interview and photo ethnography. Most of the interview questions were supplied to us by our teacher. We each interviewed the other and found out things such as our favorite colors, our aesthetics, passions, interests, and other similar traits to figure out who we are as people. From this interview I learned that Lindsey is a self described “girly nerd” who is “socially awkward until you get to know her.” I also learned that she loves stuffed animals, all things Disney, and is also into horror, thriller, and true crime stories. Stephen King is one of her favorite authors.
We each also created our own photo ethnographies which we then shared with each other. These photo ethnographies were essentially a visual form of the interview, and helped give each of us a better idea of what brand aesthetic to go for. Unfortunately I no longer have access to Lindsey’s photo ethnography, so I supplied my own to give an idea of what it was like:
After the interview and photo ethnography stage, did even more interviews. This time, we interviewed people in each other’s friend group and members of their families. In my case, I interviewed Lindsey’s mother and her friend Ashley.
We also had to create visual diagnostics that helped us understand what each other’s day-to-day lives are like. We asked each other questions like “When and how do you wake up?”, “What daily rituals do you engage in?”, “When do you feel drained?”, “Joys?”, “Habits?”, and “Distractions?” We then sketched out the answers to these questions. After this, we each drew a complete flowchart that maps out our day from the moment we wake up all the way to the moment we go to sleep.
We also created a few mind maps that helped our ideas to branch out so we could explore more possibilities for our eventual logo. For Lindsey, I created three mind maps, a Disney one (featured here), one related to her hobby of drawing people’s pets, and one for her enjoyment of horror, thriller, and true crime stories.
Logo & Brand Production
After all the aforementioned preamble, it was FINALLY time to start sketching logo ideas. Based on all the previously gathered information, I felt it would be appropriate to make the logo a cutesy one that combined multiple of Lindsey’s interests. The main ones I focused on were her love of stuffed animals, her love of reading, and her creativity. Imagery that kept appearing included a stuffed animal she’s had ever since she was a baby, a dog named Doodle, who was also a doodle Lindsey frequently doodled. For her love of art, I flip-flopped between a pencil and a paintbrush. For her love of reading, I experimented with book-related imagery, as well as a paper boat specifically, a reference to Stephen King’s book “IT”, calling back to her love of horror. The idea was there, but it took a long time to fully coalesce into something.
During this stage, I constantly asked Lindsey for her thoughts on the design, and after receiving feedback I’d make those changes. By the end of this very, very long process, we eventually decided to swap out Doodle for another stuffed animal of hers, this one being a pig named Potato. The final logo depicts Potato sailing on the paper boat from “IT”, sailing ahead on a sea made from the pages of a book. The balloon, also a reference to “IT”, is tied to Potato’s Tail.
Now that we finally had the symbol, it was time to make the wordmark. Wordmarks are a bit more complicated than just picking a font and just typing it out. You gotta tweak it a little to make it more unique. We eventually decided to use the “Ice Cream Standard” typeface which I then modified to have the L in Lindsey’s first name to extend to the baseline of the text below. The I in her first name was then also extended to fill in some awkward leftover space. There was a stacked version of the complete logo where the wordmark flowed along with the pages of the book, but Lindsey didn’t really like it, so we went with a simple horizontal variant instead.
Once the complete logo was finally finished, it was then time to figure out the entire rest of branding. Regarding typography, we used Ice Cream Standard for things like page headings, headings, and subheadings because it both matched the wordmark and had a heavy enough weight to it (i.e. it was bold enough)that visual hierarchy could be easily read. The Alverata font family was used for standard text because it had a variety of different font weights, meaning it both fit with and contrasted Ice Cream Standard in terms of font weight. Alverata was also used because its serifs make it easily readable and legible.
After that we settled on the brand colors. These were based on Lindsey’s favorite colors and they were given names: Magic Magenta, Potato Pink, Elwell Yellow, Book Blue, and Titanic Teal, with the blue colors serving as accent colors.
After all this was done, I made a brand guideline to bring everything together:
The final step of the process was to create some simple mockups of the logo. The mockups were created using free templates provided by Adam Skovran (dribbble.com/Skovran). These mockups include one of the logo displayed on an iPhone X, one of it printed on a t-shirt, and a final mockup of some business cards.
Lindsey ended up loving the final product. Unfortunately she can’t use it because as a designer herself, she has to be the one creating a logo for herself. Still though, this was an incredibly valuable experience for me because it took me through all steps of the long and complicated process of designing a logo and a brand. To this day, when I’m working on branding projects, I’ll reference this one, specifically the brand guideline. Hopefully this case study helps you to understand the process of logo and brand creation.