Referring back to my post about “Making Designs Look Easy,” I wanted to show an example of some recent work that falls into that category.
My client was looking for a complete branding and marketing campaign to promote a new MBA program at the University of Miami. As you can imagine, UM has very strict brand guidelines already in place, so the logo we created had to comply with those rules, yet be able to stand on its own. NOT easy!
Working with the name “Artists and Athletes Executive MBA,” the client suggested boiling this down to simple A2 (as in “A squared”), which I thought was not only clever, but allowed for simplicity of design which I knew would be important to the marketing team at UM (ultimately which had final approval). After many rounds of discussions, and even more rounds of design, we finally came to the final design:
Looks simple, and easy, doesn’t it? You’d never guess we spent hours and hours tweaking, revising, revisiting…. you name it. But ultimately, the design is so clean and clear that its able to be paired with any one of UM’s logos and not distract or clash. It can also stand on its one and be a strong identity. I am so happy with the way this came out.
And just to show you a glimpse into the process, here’s just a TASTE of the other designs that were created, and ultimately tossed, along the way (originally we had a color palette that included gold, but we realized it was just too distracting against the UM green and gold, so we ended up going with simple black and white):
