I Redesigned the YMCA Logo. Here’s 5 Things I Learned.
I was tasked with a school project, which involved creating a fitness application that helped users with little free-time to build healthy workout routines. While the app was conceptualized as an offshoot of the YMCA, we were given the freedom to completely rebrand the application and ditch the YMCA name.
However, I thought it would be a unique challenge to teach an old dog new tricks. I felt creating a new YMCA logo would be the perfect challenge to walk that tightrope between familiarity and innovation.
It was not easy, and after a lot of crappy logos and a healthy amount of user testing, I was able to define a logo that best represented the core users of the application, which was ultimately (and admittedly un-creatively) named “Y-Health”
Here are some key takeaways I learned throughout this process:
1. Know your brand’s history.
Creating a new brand means creating a new company image. You want users to internalize and adopt the new values and visuals of a refreshed brand, while still leveraging the merits of the brand’s history. Previous user perception never truly goes away, so it’s important to know where the brand has been, and define where you want to take it.
The YMCA has existed for almost 140 years, and its logo’s inception in 1881 was met with rapid iteration over the course of only 15 years. The YMCA’s religious origins as the Young Man’s Christian Association featured prominently in its early designs, but was “visually secularized” into the iconic red triangle, representing the organization’s tenets of developing the spirit, mind, and body.
The organization’s logo adopted its more recognizable “Y” shape in 1967 and underwent a redesign in 2010. In later redesigns this triangle became part of the “Y-partition,” the space between the left side of the “Y” and the triangle on the right.
The core of spirit, mind, and body had become so visually ingrained in the YMCA triangle, and its inclusion as a piece of “The Y” are visual motifs that have enabled the visual brand of the YMCA to persist to this day.
To be honest, the combination of those two visual elements are genius, and at times it felt like a fool’s errand to even try to redesign such a strong design. However, the research I had done allowed me to isolate the YMCA logo’s strengths, and with that opportunities to evolve the brand.
2. Sketch… a lot…
In the beginning phases of the project, the visual brand for Y-Health application was not so rigidly defined, which allowed for the exploration of many different ideas.
As you can see below, I was able to break the triangle of “spirit, mind, and body” into five adjectives: humanist, strength, professional, welcoming, and minimal.
Sketching humanist figures allowed me to explore lots of different shapes and formations, which tie into the YMCA’s community outreach. Concepts of strength resulted in Atlas and traditional “string-man” imagery. Professional concepts resulted in thinner, simpler designs far-removed from the original YMCA logo.
For fleshing out design concepts like maturity evolved into “country-club” like designs, whereas welcoming designs played more into kid-friendly mascots.
Sketching allowed me to explore what these concepts could mean for the YMCA visually, and how I could incorporate the brands historical motifs into new, refreshed designs.
3. Know your audience.
As the project matured and Y-Health’s target users were better defined, the application’s focus centered on individuals usually wary of the high-intensity nature of traditional gyms and workouts. Instead, the app focused on setting personal bests and sticking to a routine. Rather than fixate on the destination of peak physical fitness, Y-Health and its logo would have to tell the story of creating a personalized journey to self-betterment.
The application’s consideration of tailoring exercises and nutrition advice to users with preexisting health conditions, allowed us to focus the visual design to appeal to users 25 to 70 years old.
With this design direction solidified, it became easier to whittle down potential logos to develop from low-fidelity sketches, to high-fidelity digital renders.
4. Test and iterate often.
I can’t even count the time these logos, which are not even the final design went through major design overhauls. No logo is perfect on its first iteration. While design critiques and user testing can be pretty brutal, each piece of constructive criticism got me one step closer to a better design.
Of these three designs above, I chose to develop the green and blue monogram, which uses serif text to create a feel of class and professionalism. The monogram logo marries the letters of “Y” and “C” for “YMCA” and “Club.” The crest of the “C” completes the Y, referencing the organization’s past history. The colors teal and blue were used to emulate the moodboard’s calming and reserved tone.
5. Don’t get overly attached
I became very fond of the blue-green monogram logo, however, guerrilla testing around yielded feedback that the logo looked like it belonged in a medical field, especially with the green and blue coloring.
At this point a return to prior concepts was needed for inspiration. I was too concerned about communicating the heritage of the YMCA, that the new logo concept was struggling to step into its own identity. This idea of heritage gave way to the insight that the YMCA had drastically reinvented its logo at least twice over its 138-year history.
It was not out of character for the YMCA logo to undergo another revolution.
Slowly, I began to shed elements of the classic YMCA design, even the classic “Y-partition” and consolidated the design into a circular badge. The logo was reduced to a single color, to remove its medical feel. The stark white lines still maintain the “modern country club” vibe, but the gradient brings the design into a more modern feel, consistent with the 2010 YMCA logo redesign.
User feedback on the final logo showcased that the countless iterations and redesigns were worth it. Target users young and old felt the logo was modern, approachable, and classy.
I learned a lot during this project, which involved a lot more than just making a logo. I find the narrative of creating this logo so closely tied with the larger story of the Y-Health application. I learned to do the research, come up with a lot of ideas, shape my designs to my users, and avoid getting too attached to any one design.
Through these learnings I was able to create a logo that tells a good story. While I think that the current YMCA logo is going to stick around for a while, the journey of creating my own YMCA logo was an an invaluable experience to me.
