Linking Concept With Design

One of the hardest things to accomplish is to integrate a concept with a design especially if the concept is new or complex. In this case rebranding yellowbook.com is a multidimensional problem. All of the conceptual somersaults of rebranding must be conveyed succinctly without too much dependency on explanation coming from accompanying text.

In the above diagram hibuReview is in center prominence surrounded first by what it offers, and then followed by who would use it in the other most rings. This answers What, Who, and Where. To make Where stronger, perhaps the URL hibuReview.com should be included. The Why factor is strongly related to What in this case. hibuReview is the intersection of Social Media, Consumers, and Business and it is the place for reviews (Why).

As mentioned in the previous post hibuReivew is a fictitious entity I created as an exercise in rebranding. It also gave me a chance to play with Adobe Illustrator which I seldom use, because I'm mostly a raster and not a vector thinking guy.

Corporate Logo Design - An Example in Progress

Creating a logo for a company is no mean feat. There is a lot to consider, besides the design complications there is the obvious but complex issues of: does fit with the branding strategy, does it condense the corporate image and purpose of the company into a single symbol, and is the design catchy and instantly identifiable as both the identity and purpose of the corporation.

Then on top of that are the more technical issues of: does it resize well from 1/4 inch all the way up to billboard size, does it do well in black and white as well as color, are the colors correct according to the spot coloring method of CYMK, and so on.

Yellowbook is in the process of changing its name to hibu. What-bu? Re-branding is a painful, expensive and time consuming process for a corporation. I took it up as a personal challenge to see if I could create a logo for what is now just an imaginary product called hibuReview. It will be a web and mobile app where the public does reviews of the experience they had at a particular business. Kind of a mix between the BBB andYelp.

So far I've designed the icon above and the letterhead type logo below. For the final letterhead product I've decided to shrink the logo seen above so that it fits in the empty space on top of the R, thereby combining and associating the logo with the product name. The 'hibu' part seen below is the official corporate logo. I've added Review as the fictitious product offered by hibu. This is an example of starting with what is 'offical' then adding to it as other products are created by the corporation. It is easy to see now that the icon is a condensation and/or abstraction of a product called hibuReview. The thumbs up and thumbs done convey the 'review' part of the fictitious product.

As mentioned logo design is complicated. Rather than repeat what is involved David Airey has an excellent overview of the topic here.