Design Sojourn

Hi Brian,

Bummer about having the flu.

My thoughts on your new logo.:

The old logo is more legible in the sojourn part.

I like the use of bolder colours in the new one, although I am not sure that orange all over the site is the best idea.

The current blue around the site is noticeable but doesn’t overly draw my attention to everything at once. Allowing me not to be distracted from the content when reading.

The orange is pretty loud and colourful compared with your previous colours. In a way the orange almost seems to clash with your writing style, which isn’t loud or colourful – it informative, well thought through and measured, which leads me to the conclusion that as a person you are probably thoughtful and measured, not prone to blurting out the first thing that pops into your head. Which is what the orange makes me think of (a loud, in your face type of person)

Anyway that’s my 2 cents, hope some of what I mentioned is helpful.

Hi, I think Raph’s on the money with his 2 cents’ worth. I like the darker charcoal for ‘design’ – could you keep the original ‘sojourn’ colour (or a slightly stronger hue of it)?
best wishes, KT

PS I was lead here by Design Droplets on twitter :)

Hi Raph,

Thanks for your great feedback! Indeed the Sojourn text is getting tough to read. I will go back to the drawing board to tweak that a little for sure once I get all the feedback together.

Also excellent point on the orange. I left out highlighting the new colors in the post, looking to see it has an impact and it looks like it does.

Some food for thought. Please keep in touch.

A couple of first impressions – the old brand reflects and emphasizes “Sojourn” – the new one, with a larger emphasis and a slight perspective, emphasizes “Design”. It can be perceived as an interesting commentary on the direction of the site. Perhaps the journey is now set, and you are now on a clearer Design path, rather than looking for which design path to travel?

On the color, I slightly disagree with Raph. From a contrast perspective, while the orange is associated with “loud”, it also has a lower contrast with the white than the previous light cyan/blue. I think it /can/ work with the rest of the site, but application of color may have to be measured and experimented with. Perhaps the introduction of an auxiliary color to soften the orange may not be a bad idea.

From your description though, it does look like you did experiment with color quite a bit. Over all, i like the redesign. It’s similar enough to be recognizable and somewhat familiar, but it is tighter, better paced, and has a progressive feel to it that the previous one didn’t have. Getting rid of the trail ending with the dot actually opens up the design and allows it to move visually, aiding the “sojourn” imagery.

it is the “rn” part of “sojourn” that is a bit hard to read. It feels visually detached from the rest of the word, and it’s visibly smaller.

Hi Kirsten,

Thanks for taking the time to leave your feedback.

Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the great run down on the colors as well as the sizing. I am working to see how it looks with the size of the Design word reduced. You are right though it is slightly overpowering.

With the “rn” part, I can fix it to make it stronger by giving more curve to the “r” and making the “n” wider. But the reality is this sort of perspective logo, makes the last 2 letters small. Is it really that hard to read if you did not know much about the site?

In my further explorations based on your suggestions, the logo comes across a lot more tighter. I will post a logo update when I have it.

Hey Brian, enjoy your writings. Anyway, I think the logo has gone too strong on the italic effect. If the sojourn aspect is meant to be emphasized as a journey of design, the previous logo kind of meanders along whereas this one points directly, at a point so to speak, losing that journey aspect. As for the orange, I think it creates associations with industrial design which is good if you want to do that, but it also makes me recall a time a few years ago now where renderings in grey and orange were the rage. I consider what you do in your writings and bloggings etc. to be more far-reaching and not as narrowly focussed as this logo.
That’s just me however. Hope to have been some help.

I’ll start by saying that I’m not a big fan of handwriting typefaces by and large, but I understand the rationale behind your application of such.

I appreciate the fact that your logo makes no apologies for not being as visually direct as possible – I find that too many of us pampered fools require to be spoon fed these days. “I can’t read it” or “its not clear, what does it say?”. I don’t see why Design needs to be that straight forward all the time when Life isn’t.

Personally, I like the update although I’m violently against the choice of color. It’s a biased opinion really. Because I do know you personally, I find you more a blue than an orange. Heh.

Hi Brian,

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that was bothering me about the “rn” and why it is feeling detached. I figured it out.

It’s not the “rn” specifically that is the problem, it is the extended connector on the “u”, which creates an artificially long whitespace between those two letters. I would start by kerning the “r” closer to the “u”, then if you can, modify the connector to tilt upward and connect with the r closer in. I think once you do that, you will also notice that the “rn” can get a bit larger while still maintaining the “arrow” effect, and keeping the word still feeling like a unit.

While kerning the type, I would also bring the “j” in sojourn a bit closer to the “o” to tighten up that whitespace, and do the same between the “r” and the “n” for. Also, watch the connectors between “e” and “s” in “design”, they seem to be slightly off.

Hey Pat,
Thanks for your reply and yes I am a blue man!

Hi Kevin,
Again you have a good eye on this, and thanks for your suggestion. I will play around with it and see how things look!

Hey Brian, it’d be good if you showed the old design in your post, so readers can compare the before and after.

From memory, I can’t actually tell what the differences are, but from your update, the revised version is definitely an improvement. The “sojourn” text is now more legible.

Thanks for adding the old design.

Having compared the two, I think the update’s a positive one. The narrower confines aid adaptability, and the proportions between both words are more even (whereas before, emphasis was clearly on “sojourn”).

You’ve shown us how your logo has been updated, but I missed the part about your brand (as in the post title). How are you changing the overall message?

Nice switch, Brian. Thumbs up from me.