Website Banner
Created in Adobe Illustrator
Sometimes it really works that you do some work for someone, and the next thing you know, someone in their circle/industry loves what you did for that person and wants you to do that for them too. Lee Bee Coaching was one of those cool instances. Lisa saw my personalized logo for Stacey J. Warner (also a coach), and wanted me to help her get that same feeling for her new business. There is where the challenge starts; create something that is not copying something you’ve already done, right?
Stacey’s logo was actually based on her own signature and combined a very unique component of her coaching offerings (Equus Coaching). Lisa started with the idea that she wanted an image of a Bee: makes perfect sense…Lee Bee Coaching. Other than it being a part of the name, I wanted to know what it said about her. So Lisa and I chatted for an hour or so about her, her coaching style, the attitude in which she approaches the work, her own interests, things that helped tell the story of Lisa. Of course I was going to do some versions of a Bee based design, but I wanted to figure out where the space to explore was, to see if there was something more to tap into. Thankfully Lisa was a great collaborator and very open communicator who seemed to understand my motivation and totally bought into the idea of exploring other images.
A few things that jumped out at me when I started the sketch/let it all out/no editing phase. She loved to hike, and she lives in a state that has cool desert regions that she likes to go to. There was something to that and the fact that she wanted it to have the attitude of adventure more than traditional transformation (like a cocoon to a butterfly).
So after the initial work of playing with the type and finding ways to play with a bee image I I started thinking that Bee images looked like one of 3 things to me; honey jars, kids stationary/craft paper or insect-ey. So I felt I wanted to push on to something else and I took a totally different approach. Focusing on the desert.
One image that really resonated both visually and with how Lisa felt about her approach to coaching, was the joshua tree. As I was researching joshua trees and looking at images of them I started to notice that the negative space was really almost as important to their shape as the silhouette of the tree itself. After playing with it for a long time on paper I started to see a bird with wings appearing in my shapes. There is likely (Ok, definitely) some influence in this from of all of the Hidden Object scenes that I’ve seen making games.
The desert motif was working for her and the especially the visual strength of a silhouetted joshua tree. Now, to making the tree look legitimately like a tree while trying to get a bird with it’s wings spread to look legitimate, together. Well, a lot of very detailed work later, and after feeling like I just went through a rorschach test, this image along with this type emerged as the winner. With the complexity and detail in the main image, we also thought it was important that the text be clean, simple and readable…it should complement rather than compete with the tree/bird.
It’s funny that when people look at the logo, they either see the bird right away or they don’t see it at all. It’s interesting…
Accent logo for website
Erik Haldi 