Entrepreneurs Show Off Their Unique Business Logos and the Stories Behind Them

11 years ago

Apple has an apple with a bite taken out of it, Google has its stylized lettering and changing celebratory logo designs and Yahoo has the famous exclamation mark. All of these logos are synonymous with their business. You can’t see the multicolor letters and not think of Google. A logo is important for a business to have. Would Nike be as popular without the infamous swoosh? Though some may think a logo is a small part of their business consider how many people automatically identify a company by their logo. A logo represents the brand and below we’ve gathered input from entrepreneurs on how they came up with their logos.

Follow CEO Blog Nation on Twitter!

A committee undertaking

The business we started was, for the first year, a combined effort between ourselves and the Arts Council~Haliburton Highlands. It was partially funded by a Cultural Strategic Incentive Fund grant to the Arts Council. Money from the grant was to pay for the logo creation and thus, the logo development was a committee undertaking. You can imagine how difficult it is to get consensus from a committee on a brand image. Thus, the committee set parameters for the development of the logo and we hired a company that specialized in logo development to try to bring those parameters to life. The work of the artisans of the area is very eclectic and hence one parameter was to find a symbol that was meaningful to artisans working in all media. Given that we were selling art the logo also needed to have a bit of artistic flare and to be pleasing to the eye. Yet, we wanted something simple that was easy to read and understand and would be somewhat timeless. After much deliberation and input from many people, including the company hired to do the design, we settled upon the image of a classic shipping label with the business name written on it in two different fonts. The incomplete outline of the tag added to the artistic flare. In the end we were able to achieve consensus on everything but, the colour. The majority ruled on the blue.

Thanks to Marie Gage, Made in Haliburton

Stands out in a crowd and makes people smile

When we started Bright & Shiny we looked around at our competition we saw everyone following the same pattern: big, abstract, colorful logos that required interpretation. We are more common sense then that and, with a name like Bright & Shiny, obviously fairly tongue in cheek. Combining these into our identity resulted in a fun but boring, almost throwback, identity consisting just of our name rendered very seriously in what could be considered more of a print font. Because it is so basic it really stands out in a crowd and makes people smile, the exact reaction we were looking for.

Thanks to John Armstrong, Bright & Shiny

Letting my personality shine through

When I was ready to create a logo for my consulting & training business, I spent some quiet time thinking about what impression I wanted to make with it. I knew right away that I wanted my personality to come through, and I decided early on that finding a signature font for my name would be an effective way to do this. Because my name is fairly unusual, I didn't think I could do better for a unique business name and brand identity. I drafted a list of the traits I wanted to evoke with my signature font, and I found myself thinking more and more about a playful font I'd seen on beachy posters in my youth. After some searching, I settled on “Candice,” a bubbly font that evokes (for me) sunshine and fun with a retro spin. I love handing people my card, because I feel like the logo I created in this simple fashion says exactly what I wanted it to about who I am: a specialist in conveying public identity.

Thanks to Leona Laurie

A logo as playful as our name

We wanted a logo that was as playful as our name (Electric Slide) and we knew that a standard blue-swoosh corporate logo wasn't going to work. We ended up taking the core theme of the brand (electricity) and used the relatively cliche symbol of the lightning bolt for the brand image – it became more fun because we were able to spell out the monogram of the brand, ES, in the negative space of the logo. As a CEO who fancies himself a designer, I was able to create the logo myself using Adobe Illustrator, and benefited from no cost and something that worked for us on a personal level.

Thanks to Jim Phelan, Electric Slide

A great way to emphasize our advocacy

Whenever people see our logo, they wonder why we have a large T made out of dots, when we obviously don’t spell Accessibility Partners with a capital T. As a new company that helps to make information technology is accessible for people with all disabilities, we cater towards individuals who are either Low Vision or Blind. What many people don’t realize is that our T is actually the Braille for the letters A and P, with the A highlighted with the black dot. I feel our logo is a great way to emphasize our advocacy for the disability community without making it elaborate.

Thanks to Dana Marlowe, Accessibility Partners, LLC

A picture that came to mind while meditating

The logo for my health coaching practice, Awakened Wellness, started as a picture that came into my mind while meditating one day. A strong tree growing high up to the sky and deep down into the earth. But as I explored the idea, the tree, especially the Tree of Life is so overdone in the health and wellness world. So, I needed something that was going to be unique, that would stand apart from the crowd. Taking a tree down to it's core essence and then creating a graphical representation of that essence became essential. I worked with an Art Director to help the idea take shape, and then passed the idea on to a graphic designer to create the final product. In the logo, the roots and branches are mirrors of each other – in perfect balance ‘as above, so below'. It is weighted and grounded deep into the earth, yet uplifting and inspiring as it reaches towards the heavens. Constant strength, stretching to make use of and claim our space, a balance of body, mind, and spirit.

Thanks to Rachel Assuncao, Awakened Wellness

A dream come true

y logo is a dream come true. Literally. At a transition point in my professional life, images of an eye in a triangle kept showing up in the strangest places. On a pottery shard from an island so small it doesn’t even show up in nautical maps. In a photo of an old tomb carving. On a burned out flood lamp the size of a soccer ball. And in lots of dreams. Sometimes in the dreams the eye was conscious and watching me. I knew this was a symbol of the “all-seeing eye of God,” but not being religious I had no idea why it kept showing up. Then an email arrived explaining the symbolism on the one dollar bill – which displays a seal on the back: an eye in a triangle above a pyramid. I already knew that the Eye of Providence, as our founding fathers called it, is a very ancient symbol for divine consciousness or knowledge. I didn’t know about the Latin inscription surrounding the seal. Above the eye in the triangle are the words Annuit Coeptis. And below the pyramid are the words Novus Ordo Seclorum. Roughly translated, they mean “God has favored our undertaking,” and “A new order has begun.” Not bad inspiration for someone trying to reinvent her life. I knew I wanted the logo for my next business venture to embody that wisdom and remind me of it always.

Thanks to Ann Hollier, The Cogent Executive

Embodying the ease of use

RedCappi, is a hip and uncomplicated Email Marketing company, featuring a friendly smiling baby face logo that embodies the company motto… so simple and easy that even a baby can use the system! RedCappi has revolutionized the way any business can begin marketing, growing its email list, stirring buzz on social media and generating repeat business with easy and pocket-friendly do-it-yourself email marketing services, all under the umbrella of a platform committed to simplicity through and through! It's email marketing stripped down to the basics. The logo design was inspired by my baby son, ever smiling and happy and what better way to infuse the passion for our work with the love for our family.

Thanks to Alec Beglarian, RedCappi Inc.

Representing ourselves

We are brand developers – Divine Creative Design, but that can make the process of developing your own logo even more arduous as you have a million ideas and need to lock one away! It's never easy designing for yourself as the client!! In the end, I looked at what we were fundamentally about, which is very much a boutique agency with great flair, individual personalities within the company and passion for creating original logos. There is a glut in the business world with cheap and nasty logos, and as a reaction to that, we wanted to show exactly what we did – provide very original, unique and individual logos that show the essence of a company and their brand. As designers, we essentially are visual show-offs, and we used the symbol of the peacock and the decorative tail as a metaphor to describe our services. Our logo has been around now for 6 or so years and has been very successful for us. It's easily identifiable, unique and descriptive of our services. We couldn't be happier.

Thanks to Melissa Robson, Divine Creative Design

Unique and full of heart

I run a holiday house for pet dogs in Sydney. My logo needed to be unique and full of heart. So I commissioned a painting! A client of mine is an artist. It's a beautiful 2.2m x 2.5m painting that looks beautiful on display at the Retreat and converts perfectly for all my stationary. I sent her pics of some of the dogs I mind, including my own. Gave her a brief and this is what she created. I've been in business 6 years and still, the first thing people comment on is my logo. It goes against traditional marketing concepts and always succeeds in making an impact!

Thanks to Rachel Turner, Boutique Pet Retreat

Three characteristics that define our focus

From the beginning we wanted to create a company that combined smart business with helping people. Our company is Pill3r, and our motto is “Products of Impact.” The logo was created in harmony with what our motto is as well as our main values as individuals. While in the brainstorming phase we eventually came up with 3 main characteristics that defined our focus; 1. Customers, 2. People, and 3. God. The logo has 3 pillars in it that are represented by the three different colors that look like hanging flags. Initially, we were simply focusing on what colors looked nice together, but eventually we picked colors that both looked nice together but also had meaning according to our values. We chose black, red, and white. Because our personal relationship with God is of utmost importance to us and also the inspiration behind wanting to help people, we chose colors that for us represented that. Black represents where we stand in our sin without a savior. Red represents the saving blood of Christ, and white stands for how we are forgiven through Christ's sacrifice.

Thanks to Joseph Passi, Pill3r

Our tribute to an unlucky frog

Our logo is a tribute to a frog that died during the building of our house. While the foundation was being constructed, a frog jumped into the wet concrete and got stuck there. My wife and eZanga co-founder, Beth, hated that the frog died so tragically. When it was time to decorate the bathroom above the spot where the frog died, she decided to pay tribute to the frog. When the job of choosing a mascot for eZanga was delegated to Beth, she decided to continue honoring the frog and came up with the idea for a frog mascot named Jimmy Hoppa, which is incorporated into our logo. Jimmy is a big part of our company's history and culture, and his history and the process of our logo development is highlighted in a page and video on our website.

Thanks to Richard and Beth Kahn, eZanga

The combination of color theory and sound

Our name, Decibel Blue comes from a combination of two concepts: color theory and sound. Blue has been proven to stimulate creativity in humans and as far as sound is concerned, the blue whale is the loudest animal in the world, with its call reaching a level of up to 188 decibels. Our philosophy as an ad and PR agency shouldn't be to “think outside the box,” but rather, not to see any box at all. Right angles don't occur in nature. Fish don't school in a square and birds don't flock in a rectangle. The power of creativity, imagination, ideas, solutions and inspiration are found in the curves. Organic shapes and color palettes. With all of those influences at play, I wanted our logo to feel like a piece of art, not a generic piece of corporate iconographic communications. I painted it using a ragged brush stroke and then had an illustrator bend it into an imperfect circle. Besides blue, the most important color in our logo is white. All of our identity materials feature significant negative space and very clean compositions, hopefully making the logo more effective.

Thanks to David Eichler, Decibel Blue

Trying to identify what visual elements work for our brand

Well once we came up with the name, we tried to identify what visual elements made sense for our brand. That's how we came up with the tape measure concept…since we are all about filling vacant space, it made sense. After a couple of years living with the SpareFoot name and logo as created by an outside design shop, I was ready to move on to the next iteration. Through daily usage of the old logo, I realized several application and reproducibility issues. The new version I made fixed those problems, was a lot more flexible, and gave me better graphic elements to work with. Since then we've gradually added new elements like a monogram. Your logo creation process needs to reflect your business as much as the finished product does – ours certainly has.

Thanks to Matt Schexnayder, SpareFoot