Project Info

Duration: Mar 2016

Client: Redbird Cakery

Role: Logo Designer

Mediums: Pencil, Ink, Adobe Illustrator

When I first began my journey into logo design, a past client of mine reached out about creating a logo for her baking side-hustle. She wanted to incorporate the logo on vertical business cards.

The name “Redbird Cakery” was established, and initial direction was for “a three-tiered wedding cake on a stand, the text “Redbird” on the middle tier, and “Cakery” on bottom.” She also wanted to include a red cardinal bird but was not sure where or how.

Research

I hopped onto Pinterest to get the creative vibes flowing – searching for existing logos with cakes, and birds.

Sketching

I began to rough out some ideas in the sketchbook, focusing too much on cake designs at first, and then onto the posture of the bird. As I began to strip away the busy details, the logo design became more balanced, clean and aligned.

Feedback

There was collaboration with the client the entire way and was especially lucky when she would send some of her own sketches to point it in the right direction is we went too far astray with iterations.

Final Deliverable

Below are some design pieces on how the final logo could be implemented on stationery and packaging.

Lessons Learned

As this was my first logo commission, I will be the first to admit – I made the classic mistake of showing the client all of my initial sketch iterations – overwhelming her, and muddling up my own feedback process. We arrived at a final design much too close to her deadline for my liking but it was still a fun way to start my journey into the field of logo design. There is more to designing a logo than pairing a graphic and some typography together. There is a delicate balance of many elements that come into play. Part of my background is in print design, and I have encountered poorly designed logos that would not reproduce correctly once converted to single color / black and white. I did not want to become a part of that statistic and chose to focus on contrast, color, hierarchy, white space, movement and alignments.

Further Reading

When I first began researching logo design, I found “Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities” by David Airey, and was fascinated with how he broke down the process. The case studies showed the steps it took, and it ensured me that I was not crazy for all the iterations I had sketched through… that it is quite normal and beneficial. If you are interested in logo design and do not know where to start, this this book a read.