Adventures in logo development (2 of 3)

So, though we explored many examples of blending the two logos, we had to be aware of the actual existing colophons, and ensuring that we maintained that resonant identity into the new Below are some early studies of the logo development.

For giggles, here is one of the sheets With some very early sketches, with some of the notes I got from phone conference critiques from the head of Corporate Communciations. Such scattershot approach is essential early on when you;re working on tight deadline and in multiple directions at once. You need to see what they like about A and B and C, when all three choices are radically different, so that you can see which of the three directions you should move forward into. More often than not, it will merely be an elimination of one of the several directions (which still means a ton of work in different directions. But sometimes its about getting to what you want, by crossing out other directions.





















This series was built off the existing colopon, the dolphin. There is a story behind the boy riding the dolphin with the flute, but the fact is that 99% of the public out there does not know it. The dolphin colophon IS recognizable though, and so it was important early on to explore how much it could change, and yet remain. The foal with this series was also to play with bits of the Harcourt logo that could be incorporated into the dolphin colophon. Could talk for hours about the intent of each of the following, but the reality of logo communication is how you react to it in the first few seconds. How you react to it the next day is also important (that is, which logos stayed in your mind) but the truth is that neither instance requires a long monologue accompanyment. I will say, I especially liked the simplicity of the bottom three.

This group tried to bridge the strength of the Harcourt logo with the light elegance of the identity of the existing Houghton Mifflin logo. The direction is decidedly different from either pre-existing logo, and for that reason these were the least likely to be considered. Nevertheless, I do see some strengths in the identity and direction.














In the end, where we ended up was not so very different from where we started, which is often the case with corporate development. Here is the final logo, from the usage document I created:






































This logo, arguably, is merely an extrapolation of the existing Houghton Mifflin logo, with the addition of the Harcourt name. The decision was made at the top corporate level—though I never was part of the discussion, I had the feedback funneled back to me from the head of the company himself. My own choice, had I been able to express an opinion at that level, would have been different. But then, I rooted for the Red Sox for a lot of years that they lost, too.