Saturday, November 10, 2007

Logo Design: Bilnyckeln.se

Sometimes, the final logo design will look radically different from the initial concepts. Numerous uncontrollable factors may affect the creative design process. Oftentimes, a perfect idea suddenly appears just when you thought you got it right.

Niklas Perzon, of Bilnyckeln.se was looking for an update logo his website. Bilnyckeln.se is a website for automotive classifieds ads (by the way, bilnyckeln is Swedish for the word "car key"). The logo should be modern, slightly fun, but still professional. It should be more appealing to men, should look cool and clean, but not boring. He mentions that anything related to cars and car keys may be used. Looking at their existing logo which is actually a photograph, I thought of preserving the car key concept into a vector graphic design. Looking at logos of other related websites, I thought of giving this logo impact by using bold fonts and colors. Of course, since it's Swedish, I integrated their flag (haha, the colors of which I mistakenly inverted):

Among various proposals, my logo proposal was selected. However, the logo was not selected for its design but because of my precedent designs, which I think the client enjoyed. He thought that I would be able to actualize what he wanted the final logo to look like. He gave me an idea of what the target site would look like (emphasizing that red would be an integral color) and a sample logo which could inspire me to follow.

Apparently, he was looking for a simple but effective icon for his site. I started anew, working on a more iconic feel. Here are my new proposals.

He suggested dropping the "car key" concept, and opt for a different path regarding the main symbol. Hmm, path… Why not a road?

The "twirl" which is an abstract representation of a road soon became a more distinguishable road.

And soon, as the icon was finally decided upon, the text was added, using a font that represents the car business very well (The font I used is a variation of the actual "Nissan" font), and special Web 2.0 like effects integrated.

Nothing beats the feeling when you have finally captured what the client wants, to receive the final approval with a highly encouraging remark like "Nice!", "I like it very much!" and "Wow!" I am looking forward to working again with Niklas.

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