Creating the Logo for the Ride

BRAND = Who you say you are + What people think of you

Every good marketer knows this equation; it's one of the first things you learn, whether in school or on the job. And one of the primary ways people and organizations convey their brand; their identity, is through a logo. Creating one is what I set out to do for the Puget2Potomac Ride.

Vote for Pedro

My buddy Pedro, whom I told you about before--the guy who rode his motorcycle with a group of friends from Seattle to Barrow, Alaska, and then rode by himself from Redmond to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil--created a sticker logo for his Redmond-to-Rio ride. It's a really nice one and I've seen it on occasional motorcycles around town, most recently at the Seattle Motorcycle Show. It got me thinking that I could create something similar for my ride. The more I looked into doing it, the more I discovered that a lot of riders do this sort of thing.

The first step was to scribble out the logo requirements, which did not take long. The second step was finding a graphic designer. It's been several years since I had a copy of PhotoShop so doing my own was out. I know lots of very talented and professional designers, unfortunately, they would also be expensive, so I followed a friend's suggestion and tried Etsy.com.

A lot of small business graphic designers set up shop on Etsy and the range and quality of offerings is impressive. Eventually, I settled on St Louis-based Matt Cockrum. The deal was that he would render four different logos for $99 within 48 hours. I would choose one of the four for refinement and we would go from there. The rest of this blog covers the articulated requirements, the first draft logos, feedback, and the final rendering.

Requirements
Matt asks clients to answer a set of questions for getting started. I was going to include them here, but the questions with my answers really makes this entry go on for a while. Suffice to say that the requirements were specific, but still gave him a solid palette for creation.

Here's what he sent, two days after receiving the requirements:

Four choices

The fun and magic in the creative process comes with the surprises. And three of these (versions 2-4) were real surprises. The first version most closely aligned with my requirements. But after living with the logos (taped to a wall in the kitchen so we could all live with them for a couple days), it was the third option that really earned the most support.

After sending back one last set of changes, the final version arrived two days later, and I'm happy to say that I love the logo. It's really sweet. It captures the spirit of the ride and has just enough license to avoid distraction.

Now all I need to do is find a good deal on custom stickers.