Crowdsourcing. No one likes it. Sometimes though, you just can’t help but do it.
The design team at the Greeley Tribune was recently given the opportunity to help design a logo for Greeley’s Annual Blues Jam. What started off as a small event, has gone pretty big time with this years headliner being Robert Randolph and the Family Band.
Most of us will tell you that the design work we do isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t have to be. If what we do is effective and gets results for the advertiser, then we have done our job.
Every so often though, certain projects will crop up that allow full creativity.
To set the stage, we were given this image:
The goal? To create a logo for the event, using the cows and adding “Greeley Blues Jam.” Due to the nature of the festival and variety of acts represented, we were asked to avoid using instruments. Stick with the cows and the text.
Okay.
Like I do with any logo, I start with the text. I seem to do better when I can get a good handle on the type treatment before playing with any sort of icon or imagery (luckily or unluckily, the imagery was provided in this case).
Here’s a mashup in brief of my invesigations:
As you will see in the final, the text in the middle is what I eventually ended up with. I was looking for something that said “Jam” in a more literal sense, ie. jamming together. That, and the cows were just awkward enough, that it would help in placement with them.
After a little tweaking and adjusting, the finished logo emerged.
What started as an awkward image, worked it’s way into a pretty pleasing finished product. I am excited to have my logo chosen and I look forward to seeing it plastered across Greeley in the coming months.
