Unique Logo Design Process

Have you ever heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words?  We have and we believe it's true. When companies get their logo design right, it can be magical.  It can create a sense of community among their customers, build loyalty and become immediately recognizable.

Our Plan

With this knowledge in mind, we set out to create a logo that is:

1. Descriptive: One that can stand alone and visually tell the world what our mission is all about (see the video on the "About Us" page)
2. Inspirational: One whose message is so meaningful that our customers easily understand it and want to repeat it to others
3. Timeless: Incorporates a design so clean & elegant that it can withstand the test of time.

Simply stated, we wanted to create a logo with a message so powerful that people would be proud to wear it today, tomorrow and forever!

Our Process

Crowd Sourcing: Knowing the importance of this challenging task, instead of hiring a single designer, we decided to crowd source the design of our logo.  Thus, we hosted an online design contest.  We advertised the contest and shared a confidential brief with all prospective designers.  We were excited to receive interest from all around the world.  In the end, we received just under 200 high quality design submissions from some very talented graphic artists.  We were truly amazed by the buzz and global participation.

Elimination Process: We then evaluated each design focusing on the:

1. Message: How effectively it communicated our story
2. Logo Type: Designers used various logo styles including Emblem Logos, Monogram Logos, Pictorial Marks, Word Marks, Abstract Logos and Mascots.

We then eliminated the designs we felt did not accurately tell our story and/or could not effectively tell the story without the use of words.  This enabled us to get down to approximately 15-20 designs for consideration.

We then focused on the color Palette.  We re-looked at all of the designs to see which colors caught the attention of most of our team and which colors could be used to emphasize part of the story or even enhance the story itself.  We selected Black, Gold & White.  We then asked each designer who remained in the contest to resubmit their designs using these colors.

Final Selection: Once designs were resubmitted, we were able to select a small group of finalists (about 6-7).  Each member of our team had our own favorites by this point.  However, we thought it would be important to get input from individuals who were not part of the creative process.  So, we conducted our own market research.  We shared the designs of the finalists via an online survey tool with a numerous individuals in the graphic design business, members of our church and other non-profit organizations we support along with friends and family.  Each participant scored each design based upon a scale we provided.  We used the results of our survey to select our logo.  

The Winner: The chosen logo was selected because it was the design with the highest overall score and also had the most #1 rankings by our research participants.

To learn the story and the message behind the logo see our "Inspirational Logo Message" page.