This is the company name of a foundation in Oman that works to enhance the physical, economic and social well-being of women and their families. I had the privilege of being the lead designer on the logo creation as well as an identity system and more. I’m going to bring you along the journey of this logo creation process and how I arrived at the final logo.
Phase 1
After the initial kick off meeting with the introduction to the project I started sketching. I was thinking that I wanted to convey family from the beginning because I knew the focus of the foundation was on mothers and they are the hub of the family wheel. I sketched a more or less realistic interpretation of a mother and father holding hands with a child. Then I thought about how I would tie this logo to the middle east. Perhaps I should bring in the shape of the country? What about merging the beautiful architecture in Oman with the letters to create some kind of interesting typographic shape?
Phase 2
Then I started to think that abstracting the mark might be a better approach. That way it could still symbolize a family without showing the obvious and at the same time create a visually compelling mark. I played with a trinitarian design – symbolizing the family unit. Then of course the subject of hands came up. While hand logos have been done everyway to Sunday, I had to try: A mother’s hand reaching for her child’s, a close up of fingers overlapping, etc.
Phase 3
None of these options really encompassed the entire message of the foundation. So I went back to the idea of the family and tried to integrate the family into one shape. I thought about showing just one person instead of three, but that seemed too specific. Then I looked back on my sketches of a row of architectural columns and noticed that there was something there in the negative space between two columns. I drew a better sketch with more intention to create a family-like shape. After tweaking that sketch and rounding the edges a bit more the basic logo concept was born.
Final Logo
For an overview of the creative process you can refer to my previous post our recipe for the creative process.
