I was challenged with designing an identity logo and brand for Trinity's Treehouse Preschool. Shown below is the main (final) logo mark. Following are the steps I took to reach the final point in this logo mark, including the beginning stages of brainstorming and planning, through the final stages of refinement and application.
First, I began with some free brainstorming. Shown above are a couple of pages from my sketchbook showing some of the process. I began with making a list of key words that would spark ideas and creativity. The words I listed were the first things to come to mind when thinking about Trinity's Treehouse Preschool. Following the list, I began to loosely sketch icons based on those words to try end spark inspiration for logos. On the right page, I began thumb nailing some logo ideas that I thought up based on the quick icon sketches I did previously.
Shown above are vector roughs. The two bottom designs are based on thumbnail sketches while the two upper designs were inspired by the two bottom designs.
I decided to use the treehouse as the logo. Although it is fairly obvious to the name, it is easily identified as the Trinity's Treehouse logo because of its playful yet sophisticated design. After choosing a logo, I tried a few different type placements. I chose Century Gothic Bold in caps for "Trinity's Treehouse" in and Century Gothic Medium for "Preschool". I chose this font because the Sans Serif font is professional but the two lowercase i's and the upper/lowercase "Preschool" invites a sense of playfulness as well.
Even after experimenting with different typeface placements, I still could not decide on one specific placement. I narrowed it down to three options and added some different color options to each logo mark to help decide on the final design.
I decided on using a variation of the last two color schemes for the final logo mark and then applied it to the chosen mark. Shown here is the final color scheme.
To the left is the main logo mark design. To the right is another acceptable variation of the design. Although the design to the left is to be used for most applications, the design on the right is acceptable to use in some instances where a round design is not acceptable.
Shown above are some options for the logo mark to be used in separate parts. The treehouse mark can be used alone and below that are two different options for typographic placement.
