Holy Cow! a logo. The refresh, Part 1

currentlogoThere it is, our logo for the last 5+ years. It’s taken really good care of us, has received lots of compliments and most importantly has made people smile…but it is time for a refresh and over the next few days I’m going to give you a front row seat to the process and reveal the final logo in Part 3.

I have now worked with the worse client ever – myself. This has been a very good process for me if for only the simple reminder of what the people and churches we work with go through when we create their new logo. I was reminded of why we design in black and white and add a color study at the end, I felt the need to get everyone’s advice and input and I took the deep breath it takes to commit to a new logo. I walked in your shoes and I think it has made me a better designer and communicator.

The first thing I did was break a rule. I started with the intent of a refresh and ended up with a new mark. Now, in my defense it wasn’t a completely new mark, I was keeping the type and I was keeping our primary mark…in places. See I was bored, I gave my self all sort of liberty and I was trying to find a place to start. And it produced these

holycownew1holycownew2

Now these are certainly not refined, but I kind of liked them. They were fun, kinda clever and new. Then, I wrote this post and it reminded me that a great mark can grow, but it should never fade away. A logo refresh isn’t about throwing away the old and bringing in the new, it’s about refinement and answering the questions of why you need a refresh in the first place. So back to the drawing board.

Too often a logo is refreshed because we are simply bored with it. After all we’ve been staring at this for over 5 years. Of course there’s also the new logo that catches your eye, “I want something cool like that” you tell yourself. Next thing you know you have a shiny new logo…with none of your DNA. So why did we need to refresh our logo? Were we bored, and since we are a design firm and no money is at stake were we just having fun? Nope. Ok, yes we were, but there were also concrete reasons why the Holy Cow logo needed refreshing.

  1. I rushed my own logo process in the beginning. Timing was critical when we launched Holy Cow, I needed a logo, I knew my general direction and I tore off. Now, I like our logo, but it lacks a bit of personality. Holy Cow! is a big name. Even the way people say it (along with my amazing voice mail message by my smoking hot wife) is big and the current logo misses some of that bigness.
  2. Besides bringing more personality to the logo the current logo is just a bit…easy. The bubble is one continuous static line, the type is pretty straight from the box. If we’re going to call ourselves the church’s design studio and help you ‘become the most ridiculous creative place on the planet’ we better look like it!
  3. I also have a problem with the logo standing out when shrunk down. When I saw it on the cultivate site I thought so even more and that was the final push to begin the refresh 30+ days ago.

So there were my parameters…now it’s time to dig in.

Come back tomorrow as we continue to walk through the refresh. First up…type. In the meantime forward this post, send a tweet, post it to FB…spread the love.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under holy cow . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • You're absolutely right. Though I'm not a big advocate of the long run on sentences of most mission/vision type statements. Those tend to be very old school thinking and are usually focused on the activity of developing the statement instead of living the vision.

    Values/Vision/Mission should always be in front of us, it should be a part of our DNA. Victory World Church is a GREAT example of this. They have large banners around their church with simple phrases and imagery that enforce each of their values.

    <img alt="" src="http://jesushatespapyrus.com/images/visualmission.jpg">

    But I absolutely looked at who we are and what we have set out to do:

    "Our goal is to see the church become the most ridiculously creative place on the planet."... Read More

    That's the WHAT, and the WHY and that's simple: Because the church needs to do a better job at how it communicates the message and life of Christ.

    That can all be summed up by saying I have set out to help the church communicate creatively. That statement is already played out in our current logo, another reason not to completely deviate from that core concept.

    Good stuff and a great reminder that a logo isn't just a pretty picture or even what you do, it is the representation of who you are.
  • PB
    wow! you're doing this all without re-examining your mission/vision and core values??? can we form a focus group for you? (lol). Actually, in a denomination that I was formerly associated with, every time a pastor or staff member resigned and was to be replaced, the "pastoral call committee)had to trigger a mission/vision/values re-examination. Tedious, but kept the info in front of the committee and congregation.
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