This is my first draft of the logo and font idea that I spoke about earlier. I’m not entirely sure I actually like this idea. To me, for some reason the squareness of the logo doesn’t quite fit. I think it might be because of the curve of the backwards ‘F’ which seems more appropriate because I like the idea of the hand written text almost being like a signature. However, I am unsure about the use of this particular ‘F’ because I think the bottom half of it curves too far away from the text; it almost seems as if it isn’t a part of it.

Because my colour scheme is also based on golds as well as green, which I had actually was just going to use in the mockups etc., I think in my next draft I will make the logo itself a golden or more orange colour. Because I also don’t like the squareness of the triple spiral, I need to think of a different way to frame it then by cutting out the middle of the spiral. Several of my friends suggested just using the actual spiral itself, which I think I’m going to consider using.

I’ve been talking with my teacher Mike and my classmates and reflecting back on my original sketches and I have decided to go with the most popular idea with both my friends and teacher and the idea that came up the most during my sketches which was to combine my handwritten text and the blocked serif font to create my ‘Fitnesse’ logo.

 

These were the handwritten fonts that I was experimenting with. As I said on a previous post, I liked the colour that I had used for these because of the richness of it, so I decided to stick with it for the actual logo. The different types of fonts are, in chronological order: KG Eyes Wide Open, Guld Script Personal, Hemmett Personal Use and California Harvest Regular. In comparison to the sketches that I made earlier I like the idea of using KG Eyes Wide Open first because I like the idea of a backwards ‘F’ as that seems more unusual and that it would stand out more. However, I do like the curve of the Guld Script Personal as it almost reminds me of a running person with perhaps a javelin or a hoop.

Looking at the actual logo itself I was leafing through my sketches when I saw some of the Celtic designs I’d been doing after talking with Mike and it got me thinking. After we’d done some researching during our lesson, we looked at some symbols online and found this.

It’s called a triple spiral. Each swirl is supposed to represent the three different stages a woman can go through in life: the maiden, the mother and the crone. I really really liked this idea; the swirls mean it is eye-catching and the design of the entire thing is very smooth and supple, which brings forward the idea of it being a female gym where yoga and other gymnastic sports can be used. My favourite design of this would be the bottom right triple spiral. Mike suggested the idea of cutting out the inner part of the spiral and using it alongside my font. I think next I will try to do this.

This is my second mockup of my logo. I’m not entirely sure about this design. I don’t know if I think the colour of the font works, or if the green is too bright. I think this was a problem with my previous design, and so I’m going to look into making my font darker and experiment with different types of green as seen below. I also was just playing around with the weight idea which I know is stereotypical which is what I’m trying to avoid in this brief, but I just wanted to see whether it worked. To me, it does work quite well with the block text but because I knew this wasn’t technically part of my brief I don’t want to use it. I’m also not entirely keen on the font used.

These are the different types of fonts that I was experimenting with. The different fonts were in chronological order: Engravers MT Regular, Lucida Fax Regular, Palatino Regular and Lucida Bright Regular. I do like the first font – Engravers – but I think that Lucida Bright works the best because of how much taller and thinner the font itself is. I think that it would fit better with the look that I’m going with for this brand.

The darker use of green in the Lucida Bright font I also like because green signifies fertility, harmony and growth and I think the darker green shows this more effectively than a murkier or brighter colour as seen above. I also think that a darker colour would work more effectively within this brand because of the contrast of that between the orange-gold of the logo itself.

 

I’ve just been playing around with ideas for my logo and font. I didn’t really like any of the previous ideas, so I just randomly decided to make a few lines of a woman and add it to the font. Not entirely sure I like the idea but I just wanted to attempt to make something that I thought might work.

 

I’m not entirely sure about this design; I feel like the actual logo itself is too simple and doesn’t quite convey what I’m trying to get across. It also seems a little too feminine. The font I quite like, but I feel like again it would be difficult to reproduce, and I’m unsure about the shade of green. I think perhaps I’d like to go darker, more of a forest green, to provoke images of prosperity and calmness that I’d like Fitnessé to convey. The shade of yellow that I used for the woman figure is also too murky and I think I’d like it to be more gold, with shades of darker gold to make it clearer. I think I definitely need to practise more.

I decided to start with looking at my logos. To get a rough idea of what I wanted, I took several pieces of paper and just sketched some ideas out, just so I could have something to focus on while I organised what I actually wanted.

 

To begin with, I looked at logo combinations with the font. I chose to incorporate figures into the ‘F’ of the word ‘Fitnessé’ because I felt it was more eye-catching and that it fit better with the overall theme of the gym; for example, it was easier to make the figure more flowing and feminine attached to the F, as seen in the top two pictures. Because I was also aiming for my gym to be about not only hard cardio and weight lifting but also focusing on yoga and relaxation, this felt like it would be perfect for indicating this to potential users.

However, I felt like the logos were too complicated and that if this was a real clientele it would be too difficult for them to reproduce constantly, and so I abandoned this idea for now.

Next I looked at maybe more of a focus on weights, incorporating this underneath the actual ‘Fitnessé’ logo itself. Although I did like the simplicity of these designs, I felt like they were too stereotypical and similar to what I’d seen before in my research, and so I chose to not continue with them.

The right logo is looking at the use of weights, but I was also just playing around with any kind of design just to see if something cropped up. I did look at using wreaths as an idea for perhaps victory, sort of reflected in the left hand logo, but I felt this was too similar to logos already used, a.k.a. the Fred Perry logo.

Finally, after speaking with Mike, I decided to look at women’s symbols and found that in many cultures the number three is associated with them, as well as the moon. The idea of three is usually indicative of the three ‘types’ of women: the maiden, the mother and the crone, which I thought was quite a good idea. The moon is obviously associated with the menstrual cycle, and so I just decided to play around with some ideas both reflecting the number 3 and the moon itself. However, I’m unsure about these ideas as I think they don’t look professional enough and that it doesn’t really fit with the look my gym is going for.

 

 

As an add-on, this quick design was a symbol I drew when thinking about the number three, but I’m unsure whether I really like it or not. I decided to put it up here just in case.