Ironically, I was recently commissioned to design a logo for a startup barbecue business for a couple of friends. Unfortunately, due to my diet, I couldn’t accept payment in the form of delicious smoked ribs and had to settle on regular Benjamins. (Feelings are hurt, tbh.)
Read moreLogo: Slayed By J
I was trying to wait before writing an official blog post introducing my latest logo design, as I wanted to take some hero shots of the collateral that comes with it, but the South Jersey-based makeup artist I designed it for debuted the logo and is using it on a lot of her things. I guess because it’s been out in the air for over a month now, I felt like now was a good time to show it off.
Currently, we’re working on some menu handouts for her to give her clients, and I plan on surprising her with some other unnamed things around Christmastime, namely business cards with some gold foil and spot gloss and mayyyybe some stickers.
Anyway, I present to you, Slayed by J:
Shown above are the logo in three of the four colorways. The fourth is an all white version that can be used on dark backgrounds, when appropriate. The one currently being used the most is the pink one I show large.
This design was one of the easier ones to accomplish, as Jocelin (“J”) was very vocal about what she liked, didn’t like, and wanted to see. It makes a design task more enjoyable when you have information and input from the client. After all, they’re paying for it, and there’s no need to drag on a job longer than you need to.
Her vision, she told me, was to use a script face, modern, on a layout that was simple, clean, pretty, and classy. The hardest part, I think, was having to find just the right typeface/font to use for both the “Slayed” and “By J” part. Did I want to use the same for both? Would that be too busy and tacky?
And although we weren’t into the color phase yet, we did talk about it in the beginning, just so I could try to design in my head. One thing that stood out was she asked for glitter in the words. I warned her about using glitter texture in her logo. Glitter looks great on screen, especially if you can animate it, but going to print, it’s not always going to translate well, especially when you’re working in grayscale. It will become too busy and distort whatever it’s on, and because most of the strokes are thin, it would look so weird.
I convinced her using this reasoning, but told her I’d figure something out; thus, the sparkles were designed, used, and were a hit.
I also threw in a version (seen in the screenshot above) that used no script, just sans serif, just to break it up and see if maybe her vision would sway. She didn’t, her wants were adamant.
The final design used an ever-so-slightly altered version of the free font, Andasia, for the script, and Avenir Next in Ultra Light for “by J”.
Moving on to color, we explored a few combinations using colors found on Jocelin’s booking page: dusty pinks and greys with accents of gold and deeper shades of a modest pink.
Originally, she told me during our kickoff meeting she wanted purples and golds, which if I can be honest, sort of fits her personality. After reviewing her own assets, however, she decided on more subtle and classy colors, thus adding that modern chic touch that tied in with what she was already using.
The color round of this project went smoothly and quickly, and we were able to build three palettes: B&W, Gray/Pink, and Gray/Pink with a gold added.
The beauty of this is her colors can change with her tastes while staying within the palettes, so as long as everything else she does stays the same or similar.
Because color is the last step, once this was finalized, I packaged everything and sent it on over to her. From here, we moved into collateral. As mentioned earlier, we’re working on some handout menus for her clients, current and potential.
With these, we’re ironing out final colors and textures. This seems to be the more difficult part, because the size of these is small, and too many things like lines of copy, photos, and backgrounds can really clutter the layout, and then it won’t work. Below is where we’re at, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
I’ll be updating this post as more of the collateral gets finished.
Below are screenshots of where the logo can be seen. And of course, if you’re in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area, you can book with Jocelin to have her slay your look for any special occasion or just because. All services and pricing can be found on her booking site, linked above.