The Making of Pinig Tabs: Act 1, Scene 3
Creating a Logo is a Journey of Summarizing and Simplifying
The groundwork had been done. We had registered the name of the company - Pinig Tech Pvt Ltd. The product idea was in place - Customized tablets.
Concept - check. Core team - check. Business plan- check. Now, we needed a logo. “Exciting times ahead,” we said to each other.
Little did we realize how overwhelming it would be to create something so small. After all, this tiny piece of graphic would represent us - our vision, everything the team believed in and what the business stood for. At the same time, it would be an introduction of our company to so many parties -customers, vendors, associates, team members, the world.
Simply Complex
Our vision was to make gadgets easier for people to use. So, simplicity was the first quality we thought of and patted ourselves on the back for it. But (there’s always a but!) achieving simplicity is not simple at all.
Here’s the thing. We were a long way off (to say the least) from McDonald’s golden arch that one can spot from miles away and feel hungry; or even Nike’s swoosh that makes you want to go for a run (or at least a long walk).
Our business wasn’t mature enough (read famous enough) to get to that level of simplicity. People would not look at a symbol and have the craving to use a tablet!
Here’s a case in point. Apple is among the companies with the highest brand value. Think of their logo. It’s clean and simple. Now, take a look at their first logo. It’s ornate. Of course, you may say that it was designed some 30 years ago. Sure. But a startup has the burden of explaining what it stands for.
Being a startup creating a logo, we just didn’t have the nerve to opt for a three-point star and expect people to remember us. So, we had to use the name of the company there.
Color Syndrome
Okay, that seemed easy enough. We wanted to convey excitement, confidence, clarity, growth, creativity…Oops! We’d need to have a logo with more than 5 colors! We were told that’s blasphemy, unless you’re Google.
After a great deal of thought (and throwing things - from paper planes to whiteboard markers - at each other), we finally froze on Dependability being the value we wanted our logo to convey. That’s again because we were out to create something that made life easier for others. Unless people can depend on our products, we would have defeated the very purpose of our business. So, we zeroed in on blue. Also, blue represents technology. So, it was a great match.
The other values we wanted to highlight were sophistication and discipline; and so we arrived at black. Also, black and blue looked great together.
Elements of the Logo
The logo needed to have two elements. The name of the company and a symbol representing tablets.
Pinig: We just had to have the name in all caps, because we perceived ourselves as bold and decisive.
Tablets: Initially, we had a black background with the name of the company written in blue. The black background would be symbolic of the tablet.
Nah. That wasn’t us…all cooped up. Instead, we were open…Open to change, open to new ideas, open to feedback, open to growing, open to reach out and express our minds. So, this is what we finally arrived at.
The white background not only gave the sense of openness, but also represented simplicity. And, that’s exactly where we had begun. All dots connected to complete the circle. Logo - check.
A Visual Representation of the Journey
