Background

I am starting to develop a side consulting business involving learning, technology, accessibility, and course design. I need a logo that describes the importance of inclusivity in education. I struggled with a way to incorporate all the elements I wanted: learning, connectedness, accessibility. I do not love the product as a final logo but feel that this will be a good start.

Inspiration

I really connect with the following graphics, as they explain the difference between separation, exclusion, integration, and inclusion through using colored circles. The circles are arranged inside and outside of a big circle as they visual depict the difference approaches to disability.

Attempt #3 – Picking Shapes

• I wanted to communicate variety. Considering my people-icon drawing skills are not great, I decided to use shapes. Shaped were used in the inspirational picture explained as above.
• I also wanted to communicate connection and unity. I decided to have each of the shapes touch another shape, even if it is a light connection. This is symbolic of the relationships that occur in educational settings from student-student, student-instructor, instructor-instructor, designer-student, designer-instructor, and so on.
• Additionally, I changed the sizes of shapes to communicate the learning, “comes in all shapes and sizes”.

Attempt #4 – Adding Color

• Color was an important aspect of this assignment. I wanted this page to be accessible to people who are color blind so I purposefully used colors that would be deemed accessible.
• Before using the Adobe Color Theme Extension, I searched for accessible themes. I found a color palette I liked, then found it in the Extension. Specifically, it was the Blauw Comfortable Accessible.

Attempt #7 – Finish Colors and Add Company Name

• I have been calling this side consulting company, Accessible K Consulting. However, I wanted a simpler title, and decided to use the Latin word for inclusion, which is includere.
• Determining how to add the company name took some time, as I needed to ensure that the color on color would be accessible to people who are color blind.
• I have no idea why some of the shapes are only half-filled. In the Photoshop file, they look correct.

Attempt #8 – Crop Into Circle

• This was the most time consuming step. It was important for the logo to be in a circle, instead of a rectangle or square. A circle communicates community and inclusion more clearly than box shapes.
• To create this though, I ultimately grabbed a screen clipping of my design in Photoshop, saved as a PNG. Then I opened a new Photoshop file, added the PNG, then an ellipse shape, then used the Fit Image to Shape in Photoshop | Clipping Mask Tutorial. It worked, and was super easy. For some reason the Selection tool, Magic Wand tool, and Marquee tool were not giving me the results I wanted.
• What would I do differently? Figure out some way to incorporate shapes that represent learning.

Peer Feedback

• The conception of your logo is great. It certainly helps to understand the process you used to finalize your idea. One thing I will mention is that you do not have the luxury of an explanation of the logo. Are there any elements you could include that might help show what you describe in your explanation.

• I like the logo, catches the eye and subconsciousness to want to know more. It is dynamic so you could do things to probably make it better but at the risk of making it less resonating. My only comment would be to make the name of the ‘company’ a bit larger, primarily because should you have to shrink or vector this so it can go on a letter head or even make an icon for a desktop. I have the opposite issue with my logo, as i think i make the words to large, but we are here to learn, looks good.

• I really liked the concept behind your logo design. You did a great job explaining what your logo was meant to convey. I agree I think the name should be bigger I also think you could do something with the font to make the name of the company more visually interesting. If you didn’t want to change anything with the font or text you might try making the negative space in the back ground black so the white text will pop with a bit more contrast. Nice work and great explanation of your process.