In early 2014, Jodi Winnwalker of Earthtones Music Therapy Services in Portland, Oregon put me in touch with director Keely St. Clair to develop a brand new Chirp! logo their their fledgling Chirp! early childhood music therapy program. I was so excited!
Keely and I worked closely together, though by remote. She was a fountain of great ideas and a joy to work with. My initial idea didn’t “fly.” Cute, but too detailed. BUT, I did have the right idea. They really wanted the logo to retain a connection to Earthtones, the parent company, so the Earth and the notes were understandable, just not the style they were after.
Chirp! logo, Round 2
For our next round of design options, we kept the idea of the chick hatching from the Earth but lost the notes in all but one version. We looked at different fonts, different tails, different wings. They were all adorable, but none of them was hitting the sweet spot.
Chirp! logo, Round 3
Then Keely sent me a sketch with an idea. She was embarrassed about her artistic ability, but wow! Her idea was a great way to incorporate the key elements they wanted. We dubbed this one “Earthbird.” When developing the earthbird concept, we decided to lose the notes altogether and focus on the bird and the fonts. The very last image in the gallery below is the one they approved.
Whew! That was a lot of work! That’s the way it is with designing logos, and why it can be rather expensive even for a simple design. Coming up with the perfect design that the client loves and feels will represent their business faithfully for the life of the business is creative, but hard work. It’s vitally important to the client, so they need to see a lot of options and can go back and forth a lot in the process (Keely didn’t yet it does happen). But it was so fun working with this concept, and with Keely. The ideas were adorable from beginning to end, which really kept me going in my effort to find a design they loved. When we were finished, it was a deeply rewarding feeling. You can see Earthbird, the Chirp! logo, in the header of the Chirp! website here.
