Let the Right One In

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This sample was a challenge. I had a client that had an existing logo. There was a problem that led to a bigger issue. This client didn’t spend a lot of calories when they initially formed their logo. There are three problems with this.

One, since they didn’t have an expert designer involved with the logo process it didn’t result in a quality logo. Here you have a mortgage company, but it looks like they deal with any type of loans. So now you have established yourself in a different loan industry.

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The second issue is overtime they become attached to it and don’t want to change it. This is a challenge because they fear they will lose all identity with a brand-new logo.

The third issue is a legal one. Since they decided to do it themselves, they were oblivious to the fact that legal issues that could occur when they copied a certain clothing retailer’s logo.

Here you have a client in the mortgage business, yet associated with retail and non-mortgage loan industry. On top of that, they didn’t want a huge change.

The name needed to change slightly. ‘Mortgages’ was added to the name to definitely categorize them in the home loan business. A similar, yet contemporary, san serif font was chosen. The colors were also altered to avoided being dated. The mark was a difficult hurdle to overcome. They client didn’t want to budge with the eagle. The eagle was recreated in a similar composition. There were additional steps to make the mark unique. A polygon design was added. To push it even further, a gradient was added to the polygon style to give the logo contrast and depth. This is the direction I was pushing for and hoping the client would choose. In the end, that was too much of a change. The result is a huge improvement of their past logo. There isn’t confusion about what industry the client is in and the mark is stylized enough so that there is a difference with other eagle logos.

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