Logo design.

The first thing I need to get sorted is the logo, for me to make any decisions on what route to go down. At the moment I have four styles which I am considering which is

1. creating a hand drawn style to keep with the homemade idea

2.vintage/retro style to show the old fashioned factor of the sweet shop

3. contemporary style making it stand out more.

4. Folded type - to play with the name of the sweet shop.

Preferably I would like to incorporate a little of all the styles to make this work. Although this could be difficult but i could try find a balance.

Looking at other sweet shop and bakery logos, I noticed they are quite ornamental, with swirls and designs around the name so i started by creating some designs in this style.

This logo was inspired by the ill studio type work. Ill studio uses really nice designs which i wanted to see if I could play around with. Although it seems like the type gets a little lost in the background of all the designs encasing it.
I tried changing the colour to see if it would make the type stand out more, which it did although I think there is too much going on. I thought this design would give a retro emblem style to it. Which I feel it sort of does but it isn't very obvious and I don't think its a very strong design.

For this logo design I wanted to show the hand made aspect of the brief so I created the pattern around the type, in a droplet style, showing the runny substances used to make the sweets. Again I am not sure how well this idea is put across in the imagery. also the colour needs to be changed to make the name stand out more.
these two colours work better for a sweet shop and also helps make the type stand out. I like how the colours overlap making it look a little more rough and hand done. Although one problem I can see with this design is the shape of the logo. It makes it a little difficult to work with since a straight edge underneath this design could look a little wrong. It also doen't incorporate any old fashioned retro feel to it.

More colour experimenting. I still don't feel this logo works and can see it being difficult to work with, which won't help me move forward with the packaging design.

I decided to try simplify the swirls around the writing also make the shape a little more square to make it easier to work with. The shape seems to be working a lot better. I can see this being a lot more flexible to work with on the packaging design. I also quite like how the type stands out since its a lot bolder than the other ones and there isn't as much happening around the type.

I played around to see how much the type stands out if the colour of the swirls and writing are very similar. It does lose it a little but it does work quite well. I do feel like this is a little boring since its quite a typical design to do. There doesn't seem to be any thought behind it, just a name with a little ornamental swirls around it. Not the strongest of logos.

i decided to follow more closely to the research I had done. I did do a lot of experimenting with needlepoint style type which did not work at all, but i went back to it and finally got a illustrative version which works quite nicely. Although the logo will be displayed in small formats and the detail won't be too obvious i think it could work quite nicely since it creates a rough edge to it, which could work since homemade sweets are never really made perfectly and will have a little rough quality in themselves which could be displayed in the type as well.

I tried working with a typeface which looks like its been folded in on itself. I got a piece of thin long paper to make the type and traced in on illustrator. I do quite like this type although it can't be filled otherwise the folded style to it will get a little lost and I am a little worried that since its just an outline it won't be legible on a smaller scale.

I made a pattern to surround the type and decided to include the word homemade since this is an important factor in the brief. I noticed this created a subtle house shape which I really liked. This is by far the strongest idea and direction I can go in. keeping to the old fashioned style with the needlepoint type, the homemade feel with the house shape and also adding a vintage style to it with the two lines (layout) of where the word 'homemade' is added. This could also then help with layouts on packaging, taking the line created and placing it in the packaging to aid with the layout design.

One thing that I don't think is working is the folded type, I may take this aspect out of the equation and not make anything which focusses around the name. The sales point of this brief is the natural homemade side to it and therefore I don't think I need to play with the folding idea since there is a lot of different styles I have already chosen to attempt to include. Its already difficult trying to incorporate all the ideas.

Although I do like this colour scheme sticking to one colour and using tints, I would prefer to have a choice of perhaps two or three colours to incorporate in the packaging design. My work focusses quite a bit on colour since i like working with this and therefore don't want to limit myself just yet on the colour choices in this brief.

More colour testing. From the colour choices I have looked so far I think the pink and blue is the strongest. I will use this colour scheme to help further the design process. I am a bit behind on this brief since i have had quite a bit of trouble deciding on how to start and what style I like to work with. I have noticed the way I work best is to do most of the research in the beginning and get ideas from the research. I lack experimentation a little bit but the research I do helps me make and change my ideas until I find one that I want to work with. I prefer this way of working since it helps me with my decision making. Decision making is my weak point and following research and choosing a path to go down from the beginning cancels out a lot of other options, which I would end up getting stuck on when deciding which route to take.

Final colour I will work with for now. I still feel like I should make some changes on this colour decision, i am not completely happy with it just yet but I don't want to get to stuck on it and slow down my design process since i think I am already a little bit behind. therefore I will go ahead with this and maybe make some changes later.

Open publication - Free publishing - More sweets