How to Design a Logo, Creating the TeeFury Bird

Comments July 23, 2009
by admin

Time was running out. With only 30 days until the launch of teefury.com we needed a logo like a fat man needs a doughnut. I had drained a few microns and burned through a moleskine or two trying to create the perfect logo, but all my efforts were just redefinitions of FAIL.  However, in a moment of dark desperation, the teefury bird was miraculously born.

This post is an attempt to catalog the general logo process I tend to follow, and more specifically, outline the germination of the TeeFury Bird logo.

Lets start at the beginning (naturally). I have a few die hard logo rules (which I break all the time).

A Logo should:

  1. Be Simple – able to be embellished and tweaked.
  2. Be Symmetrical – asymmetrical logos are a nightmare to design with.
  3. Work With One Color – Works in black and white and color.
  4. Work teeny tiny or big and hefty.
  5. Be Symbolic – Some element related to the product or service.

Step 1 – Brainstorm with Pen and Paper.

Step away from the computer and start drawing.  Let your mind wander.  Stay away from all the online logo repositorys.  I think I drew around 103 logos and type treatments when coming up with the teefury logo.

teefury_logos_scans

Step 2 – Digitize Your Best Ideas.

Using a vector program like Illustrator, dive in and start mocking.  Try not to use a raster based program like Photoshop or MS Paint (Although a pure MS Paint Logo could be kinda cool in a very Apple IIE kind of way).  Nothing more frustrating than creating a logo in a raster program like Photoshop only to realize later your work was done in 72 dpi and is impossible to scale up or really change.  Illustrator has amazing control of gradients, blending modes and transparencies so rest assured your big shiny aqua looking logo can be created in Illustrator.

At this point you should be narrowing down which logos really resonate and capture your product or service.   For TeeFury, we wanted the brand to be fun and approachable but also convey a sense of urgency, so for some reason I kept thinking of fire and loosey type.

teefury_first_round

Step 3 – Solicit Honest Feedback

For me a logo has to have that “ah-ha!” moment where it just feels right for the project. I am a big believer in getting as much feedback as possible from all sorts of sources (positive and negative).  Hopefully you have some good friends who are honest with you and can tell you if you’re work is crap or not. If you get a lot of “hey, that’s nice” or “oh, I like it”  or my personal favorite, “hmm, interesting”  then your logo is probably passable, but not iconic enough to qualify as a brand mark.

I was getting mixed reviews on the TeeFury logos I had created thus far and nothing was really resonating with anyone (including myself).  I decided a sacrifice was in order. I have had a logo I have used for a long time on my freelance invoices.  I’m not sure why I offered up the logo, I think more than anything we just needed something different and unique and we needed it NOW!  So I grabbed my Hemeon logo and shared it with Matt G.

hemeon_logo
(note the fat bottom, and lack of lightning bolt).

We both agreed the bird was fun and really created a unique identity for the brand, however, she had a little too much junk in the trunk and could use a bit more personality.  So I firmed up her bottom and Matt G.  added the crowning touch,  the Bolt in the eye (wish I had thought of that one).  We instantly both fell in love and breathed a sigh of relief as the TeeFury logo was born.

tf_officiallogo

The original TeeFury.com ran a limited run of tees each day, so for kicks I came up with a dead bird to indicate that the daily t-shirt was sold out.  The TeeFury dead bird was the first deviation of the TeeFury logo, little did I know the TeeFury family tree was just beginning and would soon spawn a massive mutation of awesome TeeFury birds created by folks from all over the world – here were some of my original deviations:

deadbird-teefury
lovebirds-teefury

piratebird

internationa-teefury-birds

These later gave way to our First TeeFury Collaboration with artists:

teefurybird_collab1_small

Check out the original first TeeFury Collab

Picking art for TeeFury was becoming very time consuming for Matt G. and I so we brought in some professionals. Our first three curators were  Jimiyo @jimiyo, MJ @vonplatypus and Wotto @wotto. (Currently @wotto is retired from curating but they added the amazing Julia Sonmi Heglund @sonmi)

Jimiyo joined us as art director of DesignByHumans.com and introduced a new character into the TeeFury mix (as well as cats and unicorns).  You may know him as Teevil.

teevil

TeeFury.com just turned one, and as a result even more TeeFury bird mutations have spawned!

teefurybird_collab2_small

Check out the TeeFury Birthday Collab Tee

I’m no longer at TeeFury, but I check in from time to time to say hi to my dear old friend and all his cousins.

Have a favorite logo or want to share a tip about logo design?  Please share in the comments!

Comments

from → Logos

  • Cool && awesome, I have enjoyed your post.
  • UtahWebDesignerBrett
    lol... "FAIL!!"
  • motbones
    It is great to see the whole process documented from start to finish. Stoked to see what is to come.

    Tom Jones
  • aimeemolloy
    love the new website!
  • very cool read! very interesting and informative!
  • Fantastic. I love looking through all the collaboration pieces and seeing how many are different and how many are similar. Thanks for sharing this process with us.
  • Man your site loads slow. ;)
  • marchemeon
    Awesome! Love your body art bird:)
  • First, congratulations on the new blog and thanks for a great post on logo design.

    It was great to learn about Tbird ... and I was rapt to see that thanks to the first birthday collab, I'm actually "in" your first blog post. (Mine's the bird with the party body art).

    Look forward to more gems of wisdom!
  • bennyek
    Thanks for letting us into the complicated and genius mind of Marc. it's nice to hear the reasoning and thought process behind artwork and design we see and take for granted everyday around us. tweet tweet
  • Marc, I love your new website. :) Great job on the blog!
  • Thanks Liz! Great point about starting in black and white. Color makes an incredible impact and can be the main identifier (think red from coke, brown from UPS, the olympic rings etc.) but the form must come first, each of those brands, even when you take away the color is instantly recognizable.
  • Liz
    Neat article! I love reading stories about how various logos are designed.

    As a designer myself the one thing I've always found to be helpful in designing logos is to design them in B&W first. This ensures that it will always look great in it's simplest form, and lets you focus on form and design without colors interfering.

    Oh, and, I added a quick story about your article here on our site.

    Grats on the new blog, looks great.
  • ya, man! great post - love the blog so far.

    great to see how The Bird was born.
  • Great post Marc... rad to see the process that goes into things, I am sure this post will prove to be helpful.

    Excited to see the development of this blog

    ~ Aaron I
  • It's great to see the logo process from a real life example. Thanks for sharing!
  • Hey, really nice guide man!
  • Hey Marc, I love the new blog, keep twitting about it cos it's a great read. It's nice to see where the Teefury bird started and how it has grown even in your absence at Teefury.

    Also thanks for the mention.
  • stoked to see more posts!
  • What a great first post! off to a great start. "I have a few die hard logo rules (which I break all the time)." you speak the truth on this one. look fwd to more great posts.
  • Nice read Mark. I enjoy a little bit of background on TF and DBH. I also think your logo process is right on.
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