For those of you that have not had the pleasure to meet the illustrious Daniela Madriz, now's the time. Daniela does fantastic work. She really knows her way around illustration and branding, but one of the things that makes her special is her finesse.
Designers don't smile.
Daniela knows that branding is about so much more than designing a killer logo. From the way she discusses money, to how she selects color palates, all the way to how she delivers a brand guide. More on that later.
This is her redesign of the Wheelock Wildcat's logo:
Overview
Problem: The curve makes the name difficult to read and gives it a droopy, almost silly feeling.
Solution: The new logo takes the eye from left to right emphasizing movement.
Problem: The old wildcat is hard to discifer. I first thought it was a Chinese dragon. Mascot logos that try to show too much detail usually make the mark more difficult to understand, not less.
Solution: The new mark is far simpler, relying on the "wildcats" in the name to give the animal its context.
Problem: Too much detail makes display complicated. The first logo would be incredibly difficult to display on anything but gymn walls and hoodies. Today, logos need to be even more flexible than ever before, from the corner of iphone screens to building inscriptions. For the old mark, that's a problem.
Solution: Daniela's redesign & simplification makes this logo more easily read, more easily understood, and more flexibly displayed.
The Best Part
The best part of this rebrand however, is not the logo, but Daniela's brand guidelines. A logo is only as strong as long as it is used correctly. As it is the last deliverable in the branding processes, it is incredibly easy for designers like myself to burn out and put in a minimal effort on the design guidelines. Daniela, on the other hand, made Wheelock guide for her client that is LITERALLY 62 pages long.
THE BRAND SYSTEM
If you want to see what attention to detail looks like, click on that link and take a gander. Thanks Daniela. Now the bar is just that much higher for the rest of us.