From simple shapes
Here’s how you recreate the new buUuk logo
1. Start with a square. Rotate it by 45º.
2. Give the square rounded corners.
3. Draw a circle in the center of the square.
4. Draw another, bigger circle in the center of the square. Punch out the bigger circle from the square.
5. Draw a rectangle, align it’s bottom edge to the center of the square and punch it out as well. Voila!
Here’s a video showing the logo being made in Sketch in about a minute:
The story behind the logo
We were one of the first teams doing mobile app development in Singapore (this in the “post-Symbian era”, and immediately after the iPhone launch). When we launched our first app in 2008, people noticed and approached us to develop apps for them. The following 5 years were spent on setting up the studio and, well, working. The team grew from the 3 to over 20. All this has kept everyone busy.
When you’re busy doing actual work, the least important things get ignored. Like deciding working hours for everyone, setting up policies that make it compulsory for everyone to work from the office, and also, the company logo.
We’re still quite happy ignoring the other stuff, but over the last couple of years we have turned our attention towards design. So last year, we decided to rethink our logo. We weren’t thinking of a big rebranding, but more about fixing the logo so the design team wouldn’t be embarrassed by it.
To start working on it, I made a mental list of some basic requirements:
- The logo should be simple & easy to draw from a scratch.
- Our old logo wasn’t great, but it was our first logo. If possible, the new logo should be reminiscent of the old logo.
I’m sure you’ve noticed the weird spellings of our company name — buUuk.
When the first app was being launched, the URL “book” was taken, so was “buk” and “buuk”. So “buuuk” was chosen. Hey, it was an experimental project.
To make it easier to read, the U in the middle was changed to uppercase. The weird spellings are quirky but it does make it easier to remember the name. We decided to stick with it.
I spent a few weeks doodling ideas during lunch and ultimately the idea of just the “b” from the old logo and a simple shape to give it a “plaque” appealed to everyone.
We all liked the idea of keeping a part of our old logo — even though it matched the logo for a set of headphones introduced around the same time that we started.
We played with a few shapes for the plaque, and ultimately decided to give a homage to what started it all — iPhone apps. So we chose the rounded corner square from the app icons.
So, this is our logo. A bit of the old, a bit refreshed and plenty of ideas to play with!
