Logo Archive

Fourteen years of marks and form studies

Fourteen years of marks — commissions, university studies, and personal explorations that kept me honest about form. Each entry taught me something specific: how a letterform holds weight, how a monogram locks together, or when it's time to stop refining.

Discipline

Branding & Identity

Format

Marks & Logotypes

Timeline

2011–2025

Context

Commissioned & personal

Hero triptych of three logo marks: a white 'G' monogram on teal, a lightning-bolt 'A' in orange-magenta gradient on black, a purple isometric cube on white.

Structural Typography

Distinct logotypes live or die by their structure. When I worked the dialogue cue into the COAI wordmark and locked the G and J into a single monogram, every iteration came down to the same questions: where does the eye rest, how does the weight balance, what can I take out before the form breaks?

Yellow square with the black COAI wordmark centred, set in a geometric sans.
Teal square with a bold white 'G' monogram, the terminal curling inward.

Conceptual Synthesis

Some briefs start with an abstraction I have to make tangible. The nail forming the 'R' for Roots Down — a friend's carpentry venture — kept the craft in the stem while the curve echoed 'root'. The Jazz Mission mark, a university collaboration, let a musical note quietly define the 'J'.

A serif 'R' on deep magenta with a nail replacing the stem — Roots Down mark for a friend's carpentry venture.
Jazz Mission Schwäbisch Gmünd e.V. wordmark in orange on pale cream, a small musical-note glyph completing the dot of the 'J'.
Lightning-bolt 'A' monogram in an orange-to-magenta gradient, centred on a black field.

"There are three responses to a piece of design: Yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for." – Milton Glaser

Symmetrical Harmony

Symmetry is its own discipline. In a dedicated series of geometric marks, I work strict axial balance against optical weight — the kind of problem where a two-percent shift decides whether the shape reads stable or tilted. These are the exercises that keep my eye calibrated.

Purple isometric cube logo mark, three visible faces stacked light to dark violet, on a soft grey ground.
Rotated-square diamond mark in a blue-to-cyan gradient with a hollow negative-space centre, on a soft grey ground.
Six-point starburst mark in alternating coral-red and teal triangles radiating from a centre dot, on a soft grey ground.

Looking back

Fourteen years in, my rule for a mark hasn't changed much: it has to hold up small, survive reproduction, and carry one idea without a caption. What has changed is my patience — I spend longer on sketches now, and I trust a form when it stops getting worse under revision. This archive stays open because each new mark still teaches me something the last one couldn't.

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