Pen and Pencil: Creating Indelible Brands

Tending your brand online can mean changing a logo to keep the look of your public face fresh and receptive to new and tired eyes. I recently re-crafted a couple of my most important online logos — one of them for this WordPunk blog, and the other for my Boles Books website. — and I’m going to show you the why and teach you the how of the changes I made in my online branding identity.

Here is the old WordPunk logo.  It was a bright green and the tone of the color choice matched the design of the blog.  The colors of this blog at that time were blue, green and white with sort of a forest theme to match our sub-motto: “Writing about Words in the Wilds.”  The logo font was always a bit plain, but I like the idea of text actually being an image.  I especially love it when semiotics successfully sing beyond their supping.

When I decided to change the WordPunk blog design to the current “Asterisk Grey and White” look, I quickly decided I did not like the WordPunk logo because it demonstrated its limited faults to my now non-entertained eye.

I wanted to wrestle things around, and I came up with the new grey logo you see below. I like the pencil look of the new font — this is a blog about writing and the word — and I don’t have an entirely grey logo anywhere else in my ganglia of websites. The whole of the new logo, and its being there without being there, is appealing.  I also prefer the new grey “W” favicon in your browser’s address window instead of the bright green “W.”  This new WordPunk logo will better sustain future design changes:  Graphite is the new Black.

After I re-designed the WordPunk logo, I took a look at my other logos and I decided I no longer liked the look of my “Boles Books Writing & Publishing” logo because it felt old, heavy and messy in a bad way.

Here is my new Boles Books logo. I preserved the blue because it still feels fresh.  I lightened up the weight of the font while retaining a jiggier feel and a keen, Keith Haring-like, retro look that refreshes while recalling.  I also like the pen-like font because it fits right in to the “writing and publishing” memeing of my sites: WordPunk is pencil on paper while Boles Books is a blue pen in an editor’s hand. The new blue “B” favicon also looks great in a browser address window.

Now you know how I used the emotional idea of an editorial pen and the intellectual memory of an author’s pencil to create a newer, thoughtful, ethereal aesthetic for re-branding a couple of my sites to re-establish the ongoing indelibility of my brands.

UPDATE:

On February 24, 2008, I decided I didn’t really like the new “Boles Books” logo after all — and so I re-designed it with this more professional, yet forwarding-thinking, look you can see below:

If I change the logo again in the future, watch this space for more evidence of the madness of my ongoing branding genius!

UPDATE:

On February 25, 2008, I decided, once again, the new logo was too much text and too little logo.  Here’s the latest and greatest version:

I like the double “B”s for “Boles Books.”  Can you see them?  One is blue and the other is white.  The colors start the “B”s — but your eye has to finish the rest.  It is iconic text with a semiotic sling.  I’m sticking with it.  I’m not changing it again.

If, however, I do lose my mind along with all sense of my design aesthetic, I’ll post the next version for you here, too.