At last night's board meeting, Andy and I presented a new logo to the Board of Trustees. The new logo, pictured above, was created to reflect the new future of the Cook Memorial Public Library District. Our objective was to create a logo that represents the new facilities, but avoided the square shape and dated look of the current logo.
Before recommending this new logo to the Board, we spent a year playing with ideas, colors, shapes and fonts. Over thirty logos were created and rejected.
Before recommending this new logo to the Board, we spent a year playing with ideas, colors, shapes and fonts. Over thirty logos were created and rejected.
We believe this logo captures the architecture of the floating planes and glass faces present in entrances of the new Cook Park and Aspen Drive buildings. The diagonal lines give the design a sense of shading and shape, but also suggest beams of light shining through the glass face. The wavy white line was added near the bottom to add a sense of serenity and calm, as well as to match a similar motif already established in current publicity materials. The tree was added to proximate the look of aspen trees planted around both buildings. Notice that the color and font is the same, but the styling of the wordmark emphasizes each word. The words that state who and what we are, “Cook” and “Library”, are made the biggest. “Memorial” and “Public” stand out by virtue that they are smaller than the rest, but stand apart from each other by being on different planes. “District”stands out by being centered at the bottom. And, the overall design creates a subliminal upward arrow, symbolizing upward progression.
Needless to say, we are very proud of the new logo...and delighted that the Board of Trustees loved it as much as we do!
Our goal is to introduce the new logo with the opening of the Aspen Drive Library next spring (2010). With all the location changes taking place now, we need to keep our logo/brand consistent until we move to our permanent locations. Right now, we ask you to consider the new logo guidelines when creating or ordering materials that will be used after April, 2010.
What did you think the old logo looked like? Exploding book, burning materials, a digital masterpiece? Leave your comments below!
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I think the new logo is great except for one feeling that I get from it: it is an uninviting grid of windows. I believe a door frame, a door open to what is awaiting inside is needed. There should be some kind of warm feeling that there are humans inside there to guide you, inspire you, inform you, and get you EXCITED about the library. I feel you have the right idea for a simple logo but it is lacking in warmth, a welcoming - "Come inside!" feeling and actually looks like there is no door and there is no way to enter. Also the view appears to suggest that the library is on a rise, above the common patron's life. Even the tree looks disconnected from the building. Sorry, but the library is a very important entity in our community and it should reflect in every way possible an attitude that everyone is welcome here. Can you add two shadow people coming to the door?
ReplyDeleteDuring the design phase, we played with a lot of different options for the window grid. When we removed the window grid, we lost the recognizable architectural elements of both buildings. The view is not to imply that the building is on the rise, but rather to show the “building a better future” theme that we’ve been working to instill throughout the construction project. I think adding shadow people or a door, while great ideas, would be indistinguishable when reduced for stuff like stationary.
ReplyDeletethe old logo looks like an alka-seltzer disolving in a glass of water ...
ReplyDelete