The first element I chose for my brand was the brand voice. I knew I wanted to make my brand voice welcoming and inclusive because I feel that those are important qualities for any entity to have in relationships whether personal or business.
The hardest part for me was choosing a concept for my company. I had a few trial-and-error concepts before I landed on Ladybug Publishing. I tried coming up with names and logo mocks for various ideas, but none felt strong enough until I came up with the visual idea of a ladybug. One that I worked on for a while was an illustration of a peach pit, but it didn’t give the sophistication that a logo should and didn’t have much symbolism or purpose behind it either.
The visual concept started with a small sketch of a ladybug, but it felt too intricate and unmemorable for a solid logo design. Then, I began to sketch just the ladybug’s body and focus on the spotted design element. I started to like this design because the foundational shape of the body is circular and makes for a good circular logo concept. During my sketching, I realized that the shape of the closed wings against the body came to a point in resemblance to a pen stylus. Then, I decided to manipulate the shape of the wings to emphasize the negative space between them, so I could integrate a stylus shape into the ladybug’s body. Finally, I utilized the negative space even further by adding contrasting detail elements to emphasize the stylus illustration more. Both the ladybug and pen stylus stand out while remaining balanced within the illustration because of my use of bold colors which are both iconic and contrasting.
The typography was the second easiest decision for me. To stay true to the brand voice, I felt that a sans serif was more welcoming and less stiff looking; personally, I am also drawn more to the look of sans serif type. When looking through Adobe Fonts, I came across Tomarik, and immediately downloaded the font family and implemented it into my design. I feel that Tomarik perfectly combined the welcoming and inclusive brand voice by having an imperfect line weight while still looking professional.
Overall, I love my logo design, and I am glad I spent a lot of time in the brainstorming process to reach a concept and design that I am proud of.