🔥 Rebranding Daily Fire

As Daily Fire has progressed, we felt that the brand needed a bit more love than just a few hours over a weekend. When Sam made the move to take on Daily Fire full-time, it signaled the perfect time to put more focus, energy and investment into the brand. Since it was a very exciting and involved process, we wanted to take you through the journey of how this new look came to light.

The Creative Brief:

The Branding Questionnaire we were handed from our entrusted Graphic Designer, Luke Farrugia asked everything from the product/service offering to our target audience.

We used words like ‘Fire! Cool, useful, warm, and inviting’ to describe how we would like our community to perceive the brand. We wanted it to err on the creative side, while still being functional in order to not impact UX. We imagined a darker color scheme with the intention to explore a primary red.

For further inspiration and visual references, we collaborated on a shared Pinterest board where we found common threads of simple shapes with subtle depth, vibrant colors and clean, sharp edges.

Logo inspiration pinterest board

Round 1 — Initial Concepts:

One of the scariest and most thrilling parts of the process is seeing your first round of logo designs, where someone else is trying to realize your vision and bring it to life from your best effort explaining it. Luckily, we had someone who really understood the sentiment behind Daily Fire. Luke’s presentation was immaculate, along with his professionalism. He described the thinking behind each concept, which was especially helpful in understanding and connecting with these designs.

“Using the campfire style as the central brandmark creates a strong flame presence and allows for style flexibility. The campfire brandmark aims to portray the notion of sharing stories. In a similar vein, Daily Fire is a sharing platform allowing users to share musical tastes, find common ground and connect.”

“When moulding this concept, I took inspiration from matches and that striking motion. Looking forward, the shape of this brandmark adds in a feeling of motion, moving forward…With the use of heavy curves, the flame has an illustrative feel which adds a nice flow. Playing with a repetitive small dot style, this concept aims to illustrate the motion of gas as it rises off a hot flame. Further invoking the feeling of fire.”

“Throughout my research, and through our collaboration process I noticed a trend of polygons and layering effects. This concept pushes away from the curved edge and uses hard angled lines to create a distinct flame. Which in turn, forms a strong yet flexible brandmark. The use of tightly rounded corners delivers a friendly feel while maintaining a professional tone. Paired with a semi-rounded typeface this brandmark and logotype flow seamlessly.”

Sam and I discussed these concepts and initially were not overly favourable to any of them, but trusted the process and thinking behind each. Sam provided feedback to Luke on each concept, so we could see them further fleshed out with the main points being:

• We needed something that would work on for all sizes/purposes and didn’t feel the polygonal concepts could do that in their current state
• Look 2 was a bit too safe / predictable and maybe even looked too much like a flame
• Look 3 was a bit too harsh and unfriendly feeling (though we liked it, just not for this purpose!).

Round 2 — Refinement:

For this round, we all sat in a room together and discussed the concepts that Luke had refined from our initial round of feedback. These ones got us really excited! He had taken our feedback on so well and produced great results. This time, we actually struggled to pick a favourite. We sat and stared at this screen for quite some time:

The concept on the left was polished and ready for use, we felt it could go onto the website immediately. But we were more intrigued by the developments of the right-hand logo — how it held a strong presence on its own and was more abstract. It was figurative, not literal and we really liked it. We wanted this to be unique, just as Daily Fire, music and every human connection is.

So, we spoke to Luke about developing this concept a bit further, altering the gradient and working on some additional black, white and outlined versions that he had been testing. Sam’s continued provision of thorough and specific feedback really helped direct and accelerate the entire process.

Round 3 — Colours Come in:

Yay, we’re getting close! It’s getting very exciting and nerve-racking for all involved at this stage. (Keep in mind, Luke is doing all of this, continually prompt and responsive, while also delivering his second baby!)

We hadn’t been sold on the current red of the Daily Fire and this is the stage where Luke came in with some vibrant colour options. The red was spot-on, brightening and livening up the current darker red. The various colour versions altogether weren’t quite right at first sight, just due to the intensity and placements of the gradient — though striking and aesthetic — we didn’t feel they would work for our needs.

Aside from the colours, the black and white versions that came in at this stage really spoke to us. They hit the mark completely and we were extremely happy/excited about these:

The Daily Fire type was nearly there but still not quite right. It was a bit too soft at this stage and we wanted a bit more of an edge to it. Sometimes, these things can be very hard to articulate since often it’s based on a feeling more than anything.

Round 4 — Final Concept:

Once again, Luke took on the feedback wonderfully and produced a more toned down gradient on the red logo and tightened up the type. He went with a different font that was less bold and changed the rounded edges slightly. We were pretty ecstatic about these, especially seeing the logo on a cap.

Now, it was time to thank Luke tremendously and get started on concepts for revealing the logo and getting some merch up!

Wrap-up / Final Notes:

Branding design is a fun, stressful, exhilarating and laborious process and we could not be more thankful or hold Luke in a higher regard after this whole process. He was so understanding, enthusiastic, professional, organized, responsive and a joy to work with. It helped tremendously that he really understood the soul of Daily Fire and that carried over into the final product. Branding is a tough and emotional process as it genuinely feels as though you’re entrusting someone with your baby, and the designer is handed that pressure with the job of attempting to read your mind.

To us, this moment also visually marked the growing up of Daily Fire, with a logo that looked established, professional and polished, taking great strides from the humble beginnings of the black & white 2D logo. It truly shows when you make an investment in your dream and collaborate with specialists that are just as passionate about your product as you are.

See the logo reveal on the website: https://daily-fire.com

Check out Luke’s Portfolio: https://www.instagram.com/_milktoast_/

Support Daily Fire with a cool T-Shirt: https://somewheredark.co/collections/daily-fire

written by Monica McCormick