Dimensional Form and Stylized Letters: A Logo Design

A local contractor asked me to create a logo for his commercial business. He wanted the icon to be a stylized letter “C” positioned above the name of his company. 

This stylized “C” forms a solid, sturdy, building-block shape in bold colors which holds up well on both a white and a black background. It will look sharp on business cards and other stationery and business collateral as well as on hats, shirts and vehicles.

Logo ©2015 Tony Fendikevich

This logo shape started out as a cube. From this larger cube I “carved out” a smaller cube. By introducing a second color I can define the space around this smaller cube. This negative space interacts with the smaller cube to form the letter “C”.

2015 RIT Imaging Hall of Fame Inductees

Here are my portraits of this years inductees to the RIT Imaging Science Hall of Fame.

Top to bottom: Carolyn Porco, Bryce Bayer and Gary Starkweather.

(Click image for a larger view)

A Logo You Can Bank On

My latest freelance project involved designing the new logo for Rochester Home Equity. Above is the final version chosen by the client. The negative space reveals a house or an upward pointing arrow. The color green represents the financial aspect of their business. The font, Agilita, is sans serif and modern. It has some strength and weight to it without being overly heavy. 

The original RHE logo. By the way, just click any image for a better view.

The original Rochester Home Equity logo was simply the company name completely spelled out in a serif font. As a logo this doesn’t really work as well as one would like. In earlier logo design articles I’ve mentioned the characteristics of good logo design. In my opinion, the original RHE logo does not meet these characteristics in that it is not simple enough to be instantly recognizable; lacking simplicity it is not very memorable; the serif font gives it a very traditional look but it also seems dated thus it is not timeless; the logo is overly long and horizontal so it is not very versatile.

Financial institutions often have to straddle a line when it comes to their marketing. On the one hand, these institutions need to communicate that they are sound corporate entities. On the other hand, they want to present themselves as consumer friendly. As a graphic designer tasked with coming up with a logo solution for such a company you can essentially go in either of these two directions or try to find a way to communicate both truths at the same time. I believe the new RHE logo accomplishes both tasks.

This was one of my concepts which did not make the final cut. It incorporates a fairly recognizable feature of the Rochester skyline. 

Arriving at the final logo design was a long process fraught with many revisions and with several good ideas not making the cut. It is easy to understand why designing a logo can be a difficult process when you realize that for a client, choosing a logo is similar to having a chance to choose your own name or to choose your own physical appearance. And by appearance I don’t simply mean choosing a particular hair cut or style of clothing. Hair grows back and clothing is easily changed. No, making a significant change to your corporate identity in the form of a new logo is more like choosing to have plastic surgery. It is a very personal decision.

Another rejected design, this concept leans toward the more traditional approach… perhaps too much so.

Some clients come with predetermined ideas for their logo. For most others however, the logo design process is a long journey of self discovery. As a graphic designer, one has to keep this truth firmly in mind with a willingness to accompany the client on this journey, be it short and simple or long and difficult. Doing so is one mark of a professional. It’s an exercise in problem solving and it’s just part of the job. Another part of the job is being able to accept rejection and letting some of your ideas fall to the design studio floor, as clearly quite a few of mind did.

Here are some of my other RHE logo designs which did not make the final cut. These are just roughs and not completely finished logos:

This concept hints at the reputation of Rochester as the Flower City. The “R” needs more work so it doesn't look so unrelated to “H” and “E”. But the biggest problem with this idea is that RHE does business throughout New York State, not just in the Flower City area.

The main effort behind this design was to propel the RHE brand toward a more modern aesthetic. 

 This design was actually one of my favorites. It definitely leans more toward the consumer friendly direction. 

Almost there. You can see that it wasn’t a very big jump from this idea to the final design. 


In the end I believe I presented the client with a clear variety of concepts. I'm glad they are happy with the final result.

Football and Photoshop

Click any image for a larger view.

I’ve recently move to a new place of employment – still in the graphic design business of course – but before I left my previous employer I had the opportunity to design one final Super Square Off promotional. This photo illustration required extensive Photoshop work. My goal was to create an image that was colorful and energetic.

The stadium light background was a vector stock image I found. 

To this I added a spectrum gradient.

I also added a bokeh pattern to the light beams.

Using a variety of smoke brush tips I painted in these “plasma” beams.

For the football player I chose a stock image that had no identifying markings. I converted the image of the player to grayscale and increased the contrast and sharpness.

I added a spectrum colored aura around the shape of the football player.

Then I added a second, brighter aura to arrive at this final image.

I created the new logo in Adobe Illustrator. In previous years, the logo felt more like a headline with accompanying text. This year I wanted to design it more as an actual logo. 

I've designed the Super Square Off promotional for the past three years and this particular one is my favorite.

My Latest Logo Designs

I have been so busy I haven’t had time to write a blog article in quite awhile. Well, in truth I was a little distracted by a nice summer and a vacation. But I was also pretty busy and some of that busyness centered around logo designs. Here are a few I’ve designed in the past several months — all in Adobe Illustrator:

Click any image for a larger view.

This logo was designed as part of an internal training program. The gentleman conducting the training wanted a way to lighten up a very corporate training series so I branded him as a fun and approachable guy who is always available to help the staff learn what they need to learn. 

One of the areas of this training centers around a program called Sales Force. Playing off of that name I took some liberties with his brand for use in a fun promotional poster.

“Try not! Do! Or do not! There is no try.”

For another internal promotional campaign I created this:

Finally I developed three versions of this logo for one of our customers:

Personally, I like the third one with the smart little tech droid.

On top of these, I’ve been working on my own logo. But I’m not ready to reveal that yet. Stay tuned...

Rebranding Campaign

Lyell Federal Credit Union decided to change their name to Focus First Feder Credit Union. Consequently, they needed to rebrand  under this name, getting word of the name change out to their existing clientele while attracting new customers. The media company I work for took up the challenge with our Enterprise Marketing team. As the graphic designer on the team, it was my job to tackle all of the visual designs aspects of the rebrand.

Here you can see my three logo design concepts 

and the final concept work-up which I presented to the client.

I started of course with the logo design. I came up with 3 designs, all of which incorporated 2 interlocking letter “Fs”. My favorite has the interlocking letters forming the base of a pyramid. This was a slight tip-of-the-hat to the company”s former logo which included a prominent triangle.

Unknown to me at the time, the client had also hired an agency to simultaneously come up with logo designs. In the end, the client went with this third party design, which incorporates the letter “F” in a 3 dimensional, Escheresque graphic.

The client chose this logo designed by a third party.

Still, they did decide to go with all the other marketing materials which I designed so I ended up swapping out my logo for the now official new logo from this third party. “Sigh.” Oh well, I’m a professional so I don’t brood over such things. We created a campaign which formed the basis of a smooth transition from the original corporate identity to the new brand.

Below are some of the pieces from this ongoing marketing campaign. The pieces from our presentation pitch to the client contain my logo design while those from the live campaign utilize my overall designs but with the official new third party logo added.

 Direct mail pieces.

 Print and online display ads.

 Tent cards, brochures and transaction slips for the branch offices.

Social media design.

Branding Campaign for a Carpet Cleaning Company

Clean and Green is a local carpet and tile cleaning company. They use highly effective yet 100% baby and pet safe cleaning products to expertly clean carpets, furniture upholstery and tile. The owners take great pride in their work. Theirs is a high-end, professional cleaning company and they needed to be branded as such.

Clean and Green’s original logo (top right) 

didn’t really stand out from this crowd.

In redesigning the company’s brand and marketing materials, I began by researching the subject of “green” carpet cleaning on the web. I also examined the branding of Clean and Green’s competitors. This is what I found:

• Mostly sans serif fonts
• The colors blue and green (for obvious reasons)
• Leaves
• Water droplets
• Globes

Clean and Green’s original logo was no exception to the trends for this market. In order to help make their brand stand out from the rest of the field, I redesigned their logo.

My redesign of the Clean and Green logo.

After a number of preliminary thumbnail sketches and digital roughs, I decided on a butterfly as an example of a beautiful yet seemingly fragile representation of nature. I set the logotype in the following fonts

• Kabel (Clean / Green)
• Barcelona (Ampersand)
• Gotham (Spurling’s / Carpet / Cleaning)

The font Kabel is solid yet friendly and helps contrast the delicate butterfly graphic. It is easily read from a distance when seen on the side of a truck or on a yard sign. The font choices are almost entirely sans serif with the exception of the font Barcelona as used in the ampersand. This lone, serif glyph is enough to set a friendly tone for the logo overall, helping it to be more consumer friendly than corporate aloof.

The logo as it appears in print with assorted tag lines. 

On the left you can also see details of the logo development.

At some point in the process I came up with the “Clean you can…” tag lines. Some variations of this tag line include:

• Clean you can sink your feet into.
• Clean you can reflect on.
• Clean you can sink your claws into.
• Clean enough to toss the five second rule.

Each tag line is accompanied by an appropriate photo image to appeal to different segments of the marketing audience. 

Just for fun, I also placed a version of the butterfly graphic into each photo image. Can you spot the butterfly?

Below are some examples of how I’ve applied these messages to direct mail pieces, newspaper inserts, responsive website layouts, door hangers and more:  

Print and deliver insert (front and back) and door hanger leave behind.

Print ad, lawn sign, brochure.

Responsive website design.

Office stationery design.

I believe this rebrand helps Clean and Green stand out from the competition and repositions them as a more high-end cleaning business.