Case Study: Logo Redesign of Afrak. An Online Advertising Agency

6 min readOct 19, 2020

Hi there, this is my first story here about the creative process of designing a logo for Afrak, an online advertising agency based in Iran. They are specialized in creating stunning ads on global social media platforms like Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, etc.

Problem and Target Solution

The existing logo had too many colors, they didn’t like the logomark, the word being seperated, overall the design was looking a bit busy. They wanted modern and clean looking. They requested me to design a very simple looking wordmark logo using green color.

Gathering Information

Usually, when someone knocks me for a logo design, I ask few questions regarding the project such as: company history, their services, what color do they prefer and why, if they have any specific font to work with, what they want public to feel with their new design, etc. I did the same with team Afrak too. After collecting those information I took a day to look into the company’s existing brand style, colors, website, printing designs, where the company is located, some competitor companies’ designs and graphic elements from the same place and I also checked social media of them and noticed how people reacts.

Process

After getting information I started right away in illustrator. Usually I do some basic pencil sketches for logo designs but in this case the existing logo was already there and I was confident about doing it digitally.

Idea 01: I will create a brain shape and keep it on the left side of the ‘afrak’ word.

It was simple and clean but I felt something was missing. The brain shape was too simple, looking like a bubble and might not be recognized by the public, so I had to rethink. I thought if I could add some details to the brain it might look better.

Now, it looks better than before. For a moment I thought I did something amazing and the problem was solved but I knew that I couldn’t really detect any flaws in my design right after I create it, so I sent these two designs to my client and spent my day with some other works. I came back at the end of the day and saw this design again and I noticed at first sight it wasn’t looking like a brain and the same thing hit my mind, maybe the brain was still not perfectly done, I was able to identify the brain cause I already knew it, but what will happen when someone looks at the logo for the first time? Because, the afrak wordmark was hiding almost 40% of the brain detail and it looked like a cloud. I thought this idea was a flop. But, hey I wasn’t done yet!

Idea 02: This time, I decided to put the brain in the ‘a’ of ‘afrak’

At first, I created the text using strokes and made the edges slightly roundish. Then, I experimented the logo with couple brain shapes in the ‘a’. I was almost sure with the third one. But at a point I was wondering maybe a small number of people will not get the first ‘a’ and read it ‘frak’ instead of ‘afrak’.

I inverted the brain vertically and then put it inside of the second ‘a’, changed the colors and VOILA! Now It looks perfectly balanced to me. People can read ‘afrak’ without any issues, the brain was there to maintain the company symbol, the whole design looked clean and it was soothing to the eyes as well. To me, this felt like a sweet balance of sugar and cream in your favorite café mocha!”

That was all for logo design.

Sad part

For some reason my client’s mind got changed at the very last moment. He wanted me to remove the brain from the word and make a simple change to any of the letters for a distinctive look. As I was hired to work according to his satisfaction I had to do as I was told and created this one:

I wasn’t happy, I explained this design might look good but can’t be used perfectly, like you can’t use the ‘k’ as an app icon and favicon of the website but still he told me he gets a good impression from that and also his logo usability was limited so I didn’t think about it much. Because according to our agreement my work was done, he was satisfied with my service. People have different design tastes so I had to respect his one as well. I know this project didn’t go as I wanted but the main fact is I really enjoyed working in this, so I am going to continue this story with the logo I loved! *See the logo in live site.

Exploring more works

I knew the potential of my creation and wanted to explore my creativity. These are some bonus works which I did to show how perfect my design goes with everything.

I created these design elements and some social media contents as well.

As it’s a redesign project this isn’t my a to z creative process of a logo design but this is one of the bests and it was a worthy one to share. I will share my full design process in the next story. If you made it to this section, Thank you so much for your support. I hope you liked it and I will be happy to know your opinions, suggestions in the comment section.Thank you!

Portfolio shots of this project: Behance | Dribbble

Have a project in mind? Hit me up at

📩 hellounico101@gmail.com

👉 Skype

Let’s get connected!

My Other Case Study

Brand Identity Design for Space Cube.