Brand New Logo Design for OMS!

Ta-da!

OK. So the unveiling itself wasn’t all that exciting. But we thought you might enjoy a behind-the-scenes look into the re-design process.

If you happened to read our “A Complete Makeover” article, then you know how we outgrew our original visual identity. And you know that our original identity had a couple of serious shortcomings:

1. It didn’t even begin to convey any sense of the creative energy, talent, and ever-expanding skill set we bring to every customer’s design project.
2. It was falling short of instilling prospective customers with any anticipation for the unique benefits of working with OMS, or with any sense that you can safely trust us with one of your company’s most valuable marketing assets: its visual identity.

While these problems were present throughout our identity system, they were acutely present in our logo itself. And that is where our “identity makeover” process began: With our logo.

On logos

When people think of famous logos, they naturally refer to the icons of corporate America. The “golden arches” that have come to represent McDonald’s Restaurants, or the “swoosh” that is uniquely Nike. These icons can operate on their own. Everyone knows who they belong to and, as importantly: What they stand for. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the billion dollar advertising budgets needed to successfully execute this kind of iconic branding. This places more importance of wordmarks for the rest of us. In other words – for most of us – icons can be considered “optional”.

So, for must of us, it’s more important that our company name be set in a typestyle, or font, that is unique and memorable, and that says something about the flavour, or personality of our company. Choosing just the right typestyle can be tricky. There are literally thousands of typestyles to choose from. Starting with a creative brief that draws out the personality of your company can make the process a little easier. Legibility, readability and scalability are also critically important considerations.

Typestyle choices

Setting the “oms” portion of our company name in ‘American Typewriter’ was an unusual and arguably bold choice, but there was method to our madness. For starters, it is unique: Can you think of another company that uses American Typewriter in its logo? Neither could we. American Typewriter is also a font that is distinctively literary – which one could argue would be best suited to a publishing company’s identity, for example. But, by extension, we view copywriting (for signs, websites, business cards, etc), as an important aspect of the value we provide our customers. . And while American Typewriter does hearken back to another era, that, in and of itself implies a certain timelessness, and longevity – both attributes that fit nicely with our creative brief.

The “graphics” part of our name was intended to look, well, graphic. We explored a number of “casual” typestyles we thought might do the trick, but just couldn’t find anything unique enough for our liking. Then it dawned on us. Mom had the perfect handwriting! We had her write the word “graphics” with a Sharpie several times, picked our favourite, then scanned and vectorized it.

Color Selection

Next came our choice of color. Most people don’t think about or realize how they are affected by colour – but they feel its effects, regardless. Each business has something important to communicate to its target customers, and colour communicates in subtle, yet effective ways. In our case, we chose red to convey excitement, strength, passion, and speed. Red also tends to “pop” visually, appearing closer than colours around it.

And, finally, a little dressing.

With this re-design, we gave ourselves the latitude to reflect current design trends – those of today, and those future trends we cannot yet conceive of, or imagine today. The idea here, was to give ourselves the opportunity to change the dressing, occasionally (very occasionally), without changing the fundamental elements, or character of the logo itself. As design and the tools of design continue to evolve, so to will our logo – while maintaining the timeless quality we strove to achieve.

Is your logo saying the right things about your company? Is it working for you, or against you? Call OMS Graphics to book your Thrive Consultation today.