Family Explorers

At the end of the last project, myself and several other from my class were given the opportunity to develop the brand for a new group known as Family Explorers. The company goes around to country, visiting many industries, usually school, and organises visits to many cultural hubs around the country, the Baltic being one of them. The group are targeting both children and their parents, trying to encourage them to take these visits as an educational experience.Part of what they do is give a booklet that will be used as a map where they will be able to mark where they have been and where they still have left to go. The brand then needs to reflect what the company does while appealing to both children and adults.

Straight away, after being given this brief, I had the idea of creating a logo with a stamp effect, i.e. text with a faded, worn edge based on the idea of a passport stamp. Using a free font that already had the desired effect, I altered it slightly in places, created the framed corners using the rectangle tool and the Pathfinder unite tool, then added the divider for the text using the rectangle and star shape tools. Using the add/subtract anchor point tools and the direct selection tool, I was able to create the faded effect I was after on all of the different elements of the logo. The corners helped to reinforce the stamp idea and the star at the center helped to show the child side of the logo further.

After some feedback from the people who are after the logo, I came back and change my logo design slightly, taking away the sharp corners and replacing them with a circle. Created in the same as before, I found, as they desired, gave much a friendlier aspect to the logo, still having the stamp effect, the removal of the corners was a definite improvement.