When I started up this blog I mentioned that I would be talking about Vividry. I haven't done much posting here, and in fact I seem to be posting more at the DV blog than anything, but I thought I'd chat a little about Vividry - specifically the logo.

I've already shared the logo with folks on the Expressions Google Group so it won't be something new to many, but I never really went into how it came about, so here's a little background and even a sneak peek at it in the system.

Often designing for yourself is the hardest thing to do - we are all our own worst critics, right? So, when I sat down, many months ago, to design the new Vividry logo I was a tad apprehensive. I was full of high expectations. I knew the logo had to meet the following:

I didn't want it to be 'in your face' photography-related so that meant no to cameras, focus points, view finders, lenses etc. I even steered away from anything circular.
I wanted the logo to be 'fresh', natural...almost organic since Vividry came about as a natural growth from Expressions.
I wanted the icon element of the logo to be able to stand on it's own without the textual element.
I wanted something elegant, but still fun. Nothing too formal, but nothing child-like either.

I started by sketching some ideas on paper and then trying some of them out in Illustrator using just greys (colour would be introduced later) and a standard font. Below are just some of the ideas (trust me, there were many) and as you can see, I soon start deviating into the 'natural' zone.

Preliminary Logo ideas

I immediately preferred two of the ideas and started working with colours and fonts. I knew I wanted blues, but the other colours were still up in the air. Expressions uses a very bright green and orange, with touches of blue. I wanted to perhaps keep within the same realm, but tone down the colours to something more natural, and have blue as the focus colour. Below are the ideas and some notes about them.

Preliminary Logo ideas

Although I rather liked these, I still felt the icon was a little 'off' so I played with my other favourite to see how those would turn out...

Preliminary Logo ideas

After some team chats, we decided on using the above for our logo, with the potential for using the blue and green option for future versions. We have some big ideas and this gives us the opportunity to keep a tight branding, but still expand.

Although the logo will often be used on a white background, this isn't always going to be the case, and in fact isn't the case in the new Vividry system. Here's a sneak peek at the logo in action within Vividry:

Logo within Vividry