Trixel Diary | Creating the 2022 Logo (Patreon)

Published:

2022-12-20 16:00:04

Imported:

2023-02

Content

For those of you that have read our Trixel Diary 'Logo Evolution' from January this year, you'll know that we're no stranger to updating our logo every now and again. Our latest update was early last year - January 2021. We cut the number of star points down and simplified our 'Earth' in order to scale better.

Mostly though, the 2021 update was a simple refresh of our logo from 2019 - which itself was a modern take on our Earth logo which originated in 2014.

This 2022 logo is a brand-new way of tackling and showcasing our identity and core values. In fact, it's something we've been working on since August 2022 (the longest time we've spent working on a logo update)! A lot of thought and passion has gone into this new revision, so we thought we'd create a brand-new Trixel Diary post rather than just updating the aforementioned Logo Evolution post. So, let's dig in, shall we?

Sprouting Ideas

Halston initially proposed a logo refresh on August 29th, 2022, by sending the following concepts to fellow Director Billy.

As you can see - these concepts keep the globe imagery intact but removed the star border. We love the idea of the Earth because it helps to shine a light on the fact that our team is incredibly diverse and spans multiple continents and cultures.

The issue with using the Earth, however, comes from the fact that it's incredibly hard to get right the balance between simplifying the elements so that scalability is not an issue, as well as making it evident what we're trying to portray.

Ultimately we decided against these concepts for this reason (we even replaced the Earth design in some concepts for our previous logo refresh), as well as the fact that we felt they appeared a bit too sterile. We want our logo to be fun! To represent our products and team ethos! The above concepts, while we liked the connotations, didn't feel distinctly Trixel Creative. Put any other company name next to them and they could still work.

Back To Basics

In response to the above concepts, Billy displayed interest in moving completely away from the Earth imagery, coming up with a proposal to shoot for a more playful vibe. Here is the concept that Billy came up with:

Although Billy was passionate about the more playful style, Halston didn't share the same enthusiasm regarding the lack of iconography, remarking that it had "no personality compared to an icon", and that "icons are more approachable, easy to use, universally recognized, and more suitable for our image".

Billy's main argument stemmed from the fact that it was super easy to scale (as displayed above), and gave off a more fun vibe (as previously mentioned), but eventually agreed that an icon would be better suited for the team. Billy asked Halston to "mock up some more cartoony ideas".

Light Bulb Moment

The concept of a lightbulb came into the discussion on September 31st, 2022, as both Halston and Billy liked the connotations surrounding 'bright ideas'.

Halston sent some mood boards containing logos with a lightbulb (though we can't share them here for legal reasons). In response to them, Billy suggested going with a "more abstract lightbulb than a straight-up lightbulb icon like in those concepts. A lightbulb with 'tc' as the coil maybe" - though eventually, he lost interest in the lightbulb concept, further stating "I'd definitely like something a lot more creative/craft and not as 'perfect' as our current logo. Something a bit more doodle-y. I'm not a massive fan of the lightbulb, though I do like the cartoon connotations. What about something like a cog? Translating the star border to a cog could be interesting."

In response, Halston stated: "I’ve looked for inspiration with cogs, drawing tools, lightbulbs, and so forth. I just can’t seem to find anything that feels right. I definitely want to avoid small details like thin lines. They never scale well and look outdated. I really want something bold and even silhouette-based if possible (then we can make it black, white, or coral easily)."

As you can see, we really wanted to hone in on the creative aspect of the team (bright ideas, cogs turning). What we wanted to use to connote this, however, remained an ongoing part of the conversation.

Halston sent the following concept on October 1st, 2022 as part of a brainstorm, but again, we couldn't get it looking quite right.

It features a pencil and a ruler, further showcasing this creative and crafty desire, but no further work was placed on this logo. The keen-eyed of you may also notice a lightbulb doodle in the bottom-right corner of this image, as well as a 'hand holding' concept in the bottom-left. These weren't developed any further than this image, though.

Shooting For The Stars

On November 1st, Halston restarted the logo exploration and sent the following concept:

We loved it! It was new and modern, yet still portrayed the creative and aspiring nature of the team. The slight update to the typeface was also warmly welcomed. The issue with these concepts, however, was that they were a little too similar to some other artwork we were familiar with. Although this similarity was completely unintentional, it was enough for us to develop this concept further with the aim of being more unique. We tried tilting the logo and experimenting with the composure:

We even tried replacing the rocket ship with a person to again highlight the community and unique spirit that we seek:

Billy commented that he liked the unintentional 'c' in this concept, but that wasn't enough for us to stick with it. As you can see, we also experimented with changing the colors for each word, but this would make it difficult to use on both light and dark backgrounds - which is really not ideal.

Eventually, however, inspiration struck as Halston sent this:

This was it! A shooting star! Connotating wishes and fairytales - an exploration into the unknown. This was perfect, and exactly the sort of thing we were going for. A brand-new image for Trixel Creative. From this point on, we had stars in our eyes. Billy also mentioned the fact it looked a little bit like the top of the circus tent, highlighting a sense of fun that we were looking for.

We experimented more with composition and colors, as shown here:

Knowing we'd stick with the star shape, we sought to simplify it and use it in various compositions. We asked ourselves if we wanted it to cut into the zig-zag border, blend with it, or have elements of neumorphism.