The Meaning behind AvidUnion's company logo

As someone who makes a living off brand design, I often get curious seeing products and wonder what the designer was thinking when crafting the logo. It's not very often that we are led into the story of how a logo was birthed. In this blog, I will explain in detail of my intentions and process of how and why my logo came to be.

Now that I have a strong direction of where I want to take my business, I needed an equally strong logo.

https://www.avidunion.com/blogs/news/the-avidunion-brand-story

There are many theories and rules for graphical elements especially one as important as your logo. But one of the biggest mistakes that people make in logos is trying to say too much. Most people expect one logo through the graphics to reveal the entire story and identity.

I knew the story of AvidUnion was too big to get across in a logo but I wanted a symbol that meant something special for me. I didn't expect people to come close to understanding it at one glance.

I have been meditating for over 20 years now. Meditation was introduced to me as part of my martial arts training in high school. It was meant as a cooling-down routine and I kept this going. The more I meditated, the more I was interested and I started to read into the origins of meditation as well as its varieties. I soon discovered the idea of anchors of energies that existed in our bodies that connects to certain attributes of our personalities called "Chakras". 

The throat chakra has to do with communication, self-expression and other qualities on which most creative people rely on. It allows us to communicate our feelings about life, spirituality, society, and anything we think is important, and it gives us the confidence to use our voice without worrying what other people think. Even if we’re misunderstood or rejected, we know our desire to help the world is evolving and the work that results from it is genuine.

For our logo, I started with the idea of this energy moving out of my throat and out into the world.

This was the idea of my initial drawings for the logo.

You must start with hand drawings if you are interested in logo design and this applies to all designs if possible. I believe that in thinking about design, you need to have the agility and improvisation that can only come from your hand on paper.  When it is time to take it to the computer, I can then gauge the feel of the lines. 

The head tilting up shows the energy traveling up a path that arches out where the mouth should be in this highly abstracted shape. This is then framed in a sphere that captures everything in an asymmetrical icon. Now you may be wondering why this story doesn't match the brand story of AvidUnion. This story about the logo is really just for me. How it attaches itself to the brand will take a life of its own in due time. The literal interpretation of logos to brands are really up to the owner of the brand and sometimes I feel that with logos, there is room for interpretation that doesn't have to be necessarily accurate at the time of it's birth. 

Ultimately, the shape came through and I believe it was very close to the original drawing.

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After the core icon is finished then you have to create balance with the text. Some logos are just completely made from text and others have a hierarchy of graphical icons that can transition from icon to full text with icon.

This is the full suite of my logo.

Icon: Black on white. White on Black and Full-color red.

Horizontal Icon with text: white on black and full-color red.

Vertical Logo with text : Black on white. White on Black and Full-color red

Vertical logo Icon with compressed AU: White on Black and full-color red

What's your experience in creating logos? Please feel free to share your thoughts and stories behind your logos or ideas!

Sincerely yours,

Steven Yu | Founder and Executive Creative Director | AvidUnion