The Cookies & Java logo

The short explanation of the Cookies & Java logo is quite simple. The round bit in the middle represents a cookie and the brackets either side represent programming code – its cookie wrapped in code voila.

The long explanation is quite a bit more involved and goes some way to show my thoughts and processes behind logo development. Logo design in its essence is as easy or as hard as you want it to be, in fact designing a good looking logo is very easy if you have the tools, however designing one from a strategic standpoint is a lot harder.

Easy logo design methods used far too often:

• Have a cool logo idea and apply that to whatever company comes along next, regardless of what that company needs.
• Scour the world for ‘inspiration’ i.e simply copy other peoples logo ideas by taking elements from the ones people like the most.
• Do whatever is considered cool at the current time by using a fashionable font or applying the latest chic styling trends.

These three methods will often lead to a great looking logo but I take issue with their creative development, my personal belief on logo design is that a logo is often central to how a company wishes to project itself and that’s core to the marketing strategy. Therefore the logo should reflect the marketing strategy, simply choosing whatever is cool and looks good is not good enough.

Leading on from this we reach my biggest bug bear in logo design, the ‘rules’ of logo design that are posted around the net, these often promote a set of core rules about making logos simple or being unique and work around deconstructing the logos of successful company's. My issue with this approach is it acquaints too much company success in the actual logo design when in fact the logo design is actually riding on the company's success. By that I mean logos such as the McDonalds ‘golden arches’ or the Nike ‘tick’ are recognisable as a result of the success those company's have had and the frequency we’ve been exposed to those symbols.

In my opinion there are only two rules to logo design:

1. There are no rules to logo design.
2. THERE ARE NO RULES TO LOGO DESIGN!

Logo design is entirely dependent on what a company is trying to project; therefore every company has different needs. I follow a few basic steps when brainstorming logo ideas:

• Evolution – Is there already a company logo, how many customers are familiar with it, how was it conceived? Would wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch be the easy thing to do from a design perspective but do more harm than good for the company?
• Look through the customers eyes – An obvious one this but easy to forget. It’s unlikely that a customer is going to take issue with your use of kerning or reckless combination of serif and sans-serif fonts. What is more likely is if your company needs to appear simple and approachable then customers are going to expect a simple approachable look to your logo. A Transit van would look awfully strange with a Rolls Royce flying lady on the bonnet and vice versa a Phantom would not look right with a bright blue Ford logo poking up from the grill.
• Consider the media – Company logos have to take a lot of abuse. One day they are expected to look great at 1inch across on a full colour TFT monitor and the next they are expected to look just as good cut out of one sheet of vinyl and stuck to the side of a van. The big question is what is most likely to be the case for any given business.

The two hardest situations to be in when designing a logo is to be starting from scratch and trying to design one for yourself. Having nothing to work from nothing and yourself as a critic is hard work and this is exactly where I was when had to come up with the Cookies & Java logo.

The first step was to take that nothing to work from and turn it into something to worth with, I started asking myself the same questions I would ask my clients in the same situation. How is the company trying to project itself? Who are the customers being targeted? What challenges need to be over come?

With Cookies & Java I specifically want to target small local businesses and therefore I wanted a friendly approachable logo, something that suggested creativity, something a little bit fun. I also wanted a logo that was symbolic and didn’t rely on just text, this was mainly to stand out and be recognisable in an area that is packed with creative design agencies. I was also aware of a couple of major possible issues, firstly the easy mistake someone could make by assuming Cookies & Java is the name of a coffee shop or internet café and also appearing so wacky that my existing customer base of engineering clients cringe at the thought of showing their boss my letter headed documents for fear of not being taken seriously. On top of this I knew a fundamental part of my initial marketing would be having a sticker on the back of my car so the logo did need to work as a single colour vinyl cut out.

I started with the choice of font; I have a huge archive of fonts and often begin by simply writing out the company name and whittle the choices down from hundreds to dozens to just a few. Quite often at this stage I’ll try and get the opinion of others and measure their initial reaction.

Then I started to work with the elements of the text and how the company name could be laid out.

Next was the symbolisation, I wanted something that showed elements of the web so I wrapped the logo in brackets like html code and thought I could simplify it more by having a circle (cookie) wrapped by two coding brackets.

This resulted in an eye like symbol that stares back at you, something that leaps out and draws you to the centre of it. This image shows how adding only a few shapes makes the logo into an eye.

Then it was just a case of putting the text in the middle and working on the proportions until the whole logo looked right.

The next stage was to start throwing the logo into theoretical scenarios such as being used grey scale, being used in a single colour print, having to work on different coloured backgrounds and yet still stand out. For this I created a single colour version of the logo which would be used for mono prints and any vinyl stickers and continued to work on the full colour logo. For the full colour logo I added some colour and an outer stroke with semi transparent drop shadow, this ensures the logo works on any colour background.

After this is was a case of tweaking and polishing what I had, people like texture and depth to graphics on the web so I added a lot of subtle gradients and three dimensional shading to make the logo feel like more of an object. After getting some feedback people really wanted to see some chocolate chips in that cookie which I happily added.

The last elements to consider were treatment of the logo, how it should be used in various instances and here are four examples.

I hope this little ramble goes some way to explaining how the Cookies & Java logo came about but also goes some way to showing my thought process behind logo design and perhaps even how your own logo works for your company.