Logos. By far the most powerful and familiar visual expression of a brand.
Perhaps the hardest brief to crack then, is your own. As we pass our first birthday, we indulge in how we began.
Sure, we had the name and URL. We’d even sent it out into the world in early emails, PDFs and presentations. However, the look and identity of LOOP were far less defined.
We needed something unique to capture our values, mission and in-house/outsourced agency expertise.
Most people know what an infinity loop looks like:
- It's well known.
- It has that brain-tingling satisfaction about it (when done well). A powerful combination for any logo.
Creating something different, however, and carving out its own space can be more difficult with such a well-trodden form.
It also had to have flexibility and relevance to the agency's clients as well as amplify our philosophy to build in-house creative operations. Working as a 2D graphic but being able to pop off the screen and become 3D in the future.
It should connect to our more creative, baseball cap-wearing culture whilst sitting comfortably beside our Financial and Professional services clients.
Below is a few quickly worked-up ideas from the notebook, sketching the loop shape repeatedly and trying to do something different with it.
Many loops got dropped into the ‘xx_archive’ Folder of Doom for various reasons.
However, those plucky little logos can now have their moment in the sun. Throwing some much-needed light on the process of design, it’s iterative, subjective, and there are no absolute right or wrongs.
Our marketing/advertising/design field is a shade of grey, so why be so precious and cautious with our creations?
If you feel we missed a gem or want to do a quick digital crit’ - let us know!
Even in these static states above, a sense of movement and change was essential to try and achieve.
A primary assertion of LOOP Agencies is that the current model of client and agency needs a refresh, with the natural creative cycle of iterative design and feedback breaking down.
So, what better symbol than a continuous and dependable loop to choose as our talisman?
The more uniform and flat loops weren’t achieving this and felt flat compared to the more undulating shapes, with some shadow helping to create the depth in the infinity loop.
As one final look behind the design curtain, we went back and forth on the colours in our identity. We wanted a mix of agency and client cultures reflected and a straightforward palette.
We settled with a grey cooler palette with a pop of Electric Lime, bottom right in the visual below. The Electric Lime brought some punch to the calmer, more prestigious greys, showing our relationship in our work but there were other options. Each tried to visualise a different route we could have gone down in tone and feel with the LOOP brand.
Like all brands, LOOP Agenciesis a living thing. The details and building blocks get obsessed over and refined. However, ultimately, they don’t start to breathe until they are in the world. Being tested, pushed and stretched to the needs of a business and everyday requirements. For example, this very blog is another touchpoint for our brand and one which hopefully you enjoyed seeing.
But do let us know your thoughts - did we miss a trick? Or has our logo given you an "a-ha!" moment?
Thanks to our wonderful Design Director Richard Hargrave for sharing his creative process for our logo creation.