Behind the process: 60 Minutes logo design
Have you ever see a mark of a food chain business with uniquely shaped “m” letter and it’s standout “yellow” color and perfect-not-so-bloody-red color background and…. you got it right? I’m talking about McDonald’s, the most recognizable logos in the world.
You immediately knew right? maybe the answer is the same as 7.7 billion people today, yes. Why? maybe the example is a little biased because the logo was used for a long time, 1962, 57 years ago. But, let us admit it, one important factor, besides its age, is its uniqueness. Maybe according to some people, “what? it is just the same “m” letter as others “, but if we pay more attention it has a unique curve like a camel hump, nope jk lol.
So now we are talking about logos. What is that? According to workerbee, logos are symbols made up of text and images that help us identify brands we like. It should be unique to differentiate your products among others (you don’t want to get blamed for having a similar design of ur brand, trust me, it’ll cost more than you think). Uniqueness? really? 2020? there’s not really a new uniqueness to exist, I’m totally agreed, so does Nir Eyal. He stated,
People don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently
Here is some quite good example, The California Roll, in 1970 Sushi consumption was all but non-existent. By all accounts, Americans were scared of the stuff. Eating raw fish was an aberration and to most, tofu and seaweed were punch lines, not food. The California Roll consist of Rice, avocado, cucumber, sesame seeds, and crab meat — the only ingredient unfamiliar to the average American palate was the barely visible sliver of nori seaweed holding it all together.
Then what’s the relationship between the sushi roll with a unique logo? Similarity! in this case, it does not mean the logo that you will create must be similar to the logo that you use for a benchmark. We tend to use things that are familiar with common things that already exist. for example, if you want to make a logo of a vegan food restaurant, you are very unlikely to design with visuals related to screwdrivers or pliers or buildings, right? but most likely there is vegetable-fruit-cutlery-spoon kind of thing. people will immediately interpret the logo that you make later “oh this restaurant might sell food to a vegetarian”. Well, that’s not uniqueness, please! it’s similarity! actually yes! it’s just the first step, make it familiar first, then make a “little” different from your enemies. Here is an example I mean. similar right? but also different right?
Ok cool, you got it, now, now, how do we make that unique logo? let’s try the process by Mr. Arek Dvornechuck:
Brief
At this stage, we collect information as much as possible, whatever it is. It could be, names, values, goals, etc. There are 3 basic questions that can be used before creating a logo:
- What distinguishes your company from peers in your field?
- What are your business and marketing goals?
- Where are you going in the future?
Try to think deeply about how your business going to works. In this discussion, I use my-pilot-project, 60 Minutes.
“60 Minutes is an Indonesian design agency whose mission is delivering digital design product completely, not only the interface also the experience behind it”
What distinguishes 60 Minutes from competitors, I hope so, is a complete service from research, analysis, ideate, to the final design process. 60 minutes has a dream of becoming a leading design consultant in Indonesia.
Research & Brainstorming
After we know a quick brief of our product, now, we jump to get deeper to know about the industry, the competitors, the competitors, the competitors (like I earlier, you don’t want to get sued, no!). We can do competitive analysis research, simply “try-out” any competitor product, it could be a website, application, physical product, or service. List up anything that matters like, what service they run, what is their superiority, how’s the overall experience they gave, the flow, the logo, the color, anything! then compare it up.
In my case, the 60 Minutes, the scoop is focused only on the name. So I list out some design lab/team on Dribble, Behance.
As we can see, most of the team use in their last name: Studio, and Design, but also mostly only use a single word or acronym. The most used suffix name is Studio, easy choice, I use that instead. Yeah I know, why I do more research in a name while you already had it, the 60. Let us recognized what is happening before.
I do some research to pick a name, based on the company value. I sort out the names that are related to a design agency, like “service”, “brand”, “client”, “fast”, “week”, and “professional”. It is just a random pop-up name that I think is related to company value.
As you can see above I’m trying to list out any related keywords like: “term n condition”, “120 Hours”, “ Lima hari (5 days)”, “Besok (tomorrow)” and even I’m trying to combine words like “soonday”, and try creatively like can you backward? 1 phrase, 2 phrases? and for me, 60 Minutes is quite right.
First, 60 came from Sumerian’s sexagesimal numerals, not only because the number 60 has many divisors or it is countable on the fingers of both hands but because 60 is the least common multiple of the numbers of fingers of both hands and the number of months in a year. The Chinese cycle of the Stems and Branches has the same structure as the Sumerian sexagesimal system and we can assume the Chinese sexagesimal cycle was imported from Mesopotamia to China. Today both the Mesopotamian sexagesimal system and the Chinese sexagenary cycle are apt to be explained in terms of the 60-year conjunction cycle of Jupiter and Saturn, such an interpretation of posterity should not conceal the original implication. simply said, it’s unique.
Second, historically, the word “minute” comes from the Latin pars minuta prima, meaning “first small part”. This division of the hour can be further refined with a “second small part” (Latin: pars minuta secunda), and this is where the word “second” comes from. In terms of time, minutes are the second largest part after hours, divided into 60 parts … and with a total of minutes of 60, it can be called hours, “ the biggest part”, right?
Here I try to make philosophical observations as follows,
“Whatever you do, whatever it is, with a backup effort (second) if you do it seriously it will produce pretty good results too”.
Because this project is my side job besides my main job, but I’ll do my biggest second effort here, so hopefully it will produce pretty good results too.
Sketching
After I choose the name, 60 Minutes Studio, the value, the philosophy, then here is the creativity part. Pen and paper, the best method. I try out any possible related to keywords. 60 & Minutes. and I came up with the concept of 60 degrees, circle, and time notation mark. Something like these:
Execution
After choosing a sketch that fulfills the brief and research, then I translate the results of the idea into digital-form. I used Sketch LOL. I know it’s not well suited, maybe it’s better to use Photoshop or Illustrator, right? I’ll do it later because Sketch is the only thing I have right now lol. It’s okay as long as you understand how to use basic commands and functions.
and here are the steps:
So what is inside this logo? let me explain, Typography: I use Poppin sans, its characteristic geometrically fitted with the design and giving “professional” feels to it. Check it out here to see the full specification.
Imagery, as I said earlier the symbol here represents the time concept, the circle, and the degree (geometry). The combination of the shapes I think is easy to recognize without any ambiguous meaning, yet still not being too “generic” shape.
Color, I use the blue and red-coral color, # 008DB9 and # F57369, blue is well known as color for trustworthiness and maturity, while red-coral is known as bold and full of energy. Both are well-matched to each other.
The presentation
Finally, we came up with the last part of the game, presentation, uWu. In this scoop 60, most of it will be used in digital form, so most will be used for media such as header page, in apps logo, social media profile picture and so on.
The Final
The final statement to conclude this article is, revision, revision, revision, approval. No product is perfect, especially for the first try. Thank you for reading, reach me out @60mins.id see you in the next article!
