Yesterday i said i’d dedicate a full post as to how we came up with the new logo design for theleavingcert.com. Here’s a summary of email exchanges between myself and Enda over 11 days…
17th August
Me: The logo has me stumped… i’m finding it very difficult to capture ‘leaving cert’ in a graphical element.. I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible, along these lines but so far i’ve not had an eureka moments… Just wondering if you have any ideas? Could we play with any of the letters?
Enda: Maybe this will trigger a few ideas;
- teacher’s hat the kind u graduate in?
- what about just a hand holding a pen joining into the leaving cert text as a scribble
- something a bit more fun – school kid carricature
- a pile of books?
- a kind of speedometer effect like the version2/random logos u sent on 1/some of the letters in the word ‘leaving’ – to emphasise moving on
- a scroll
- blackboard like before
- just some stationary incorporated into design pen, pencil, eraser
- something done with the word cert as in ‘CERT!!!!!!’ – sure thing
- an open head with symbols/equations etc. coming out ? ! e=mc2 etc. like a hinge effect opened brain
- school bag?
27th August
Me: Still finding it hard with the logo…. here’s some more attempts… The first one is a hand with 600 written on the palm (like a fortune teller thing). The second one is supposed to be a robot (implying students become robots for a year and have no life)… but there’s a ‘6’ which makes up his hair and two circles make up his eyes. So it’s just a clever link to ‘600’.
Things like certs and graduation caps etc… are just too american or something… not unique enough, not leaving cert. I think most people get the ‘600’ link… everyone knows 600 points is the golden figure.
Enda: I know what ur saying about being too gimmicky alright… i just tried a mix mash of your two for the craic..
Me: Great thinking with the logo, genius in fact! Here’s take #1 from me;
28th August
Me: here’s some with a slight border, more space, capitals etc…
Summary
So between the two of us, we eventually arrived at something pretty decent looking. Even though Enda’s design skills aren’t the best 😉 He actually managed to hit the nail on the head with his idea which is something i couldn’t manage despite the fact i probably spent 10 times as much time as he did thinking and sketching out ideas.
The reason why i liked this logo out of all our other attempts is because it does a better job of summarizing what he site is about. It makes more sense. The main focus of our newly revamped site will be students.theleavingcert.com. There, students blog about their leaving cert journey, dreaming of 600 points. So that’s where the dreamy bubble, the number ‘600’ and the human face come in.
The reason we chose the ‘e’ in cert to act as the face, rather than the other two in ‘the’ and ‘leaving’ is because we’re trying to suggest 600 points is not a ‘cert’ by any means, it’s a mere dream and simply dreaming about it won’t make it happen.
So for those reasons i immediately fell in love with Enda’s microsoft paint sketch 
Although it was ugly, i knew it was a million times better than what i had come up with in terms of creativity. The finished product is the logo you see below although as i said yesterday, we may still tweak it ever so slightly.
