It's sometimes hard to see the amount of work that goes into an identity just from the logo itself. It looks deceptively simple—"Could've taken me two hours!"
So, here's a lengthy explanation to justify an admittedly simple picture, but perhaps you can indulge me a little.
Or you can skip to the pictures—there are a lot of words...
A Little Background
At the end of 2012, we were visiting family in Singapore for the holidays. My sister-in-law was discussing with me how she needed a new logo for her company, but didn't know how to go about it. She wondered if I could help...
Veronica had founded her fledgling aromatherapy business around 10 or so years earlier. Since then, she'd become a medical Lymphatic Management Specialist, among other associated professional skills (reflexology, medical lymph drainage, kenesio-taping, and more). After that first company had passed on to her previous business partner, she created a new company, Masso Institute, to concentrate and promote the new medical side.
Her customers are often cancer (or ex-cancer) patients who've come to her when the hospitals have done all they can. She helps with recovery and also, at times, helps to make them comfortable at the end of their life. Many patients come from New Zealand, Australia, Thailand and across the Asia Pacific region. She coordinates with local doctors and hospitals, and collaborates with other specialists in the US and Europe. She also passes on her skills to groups of willing students and advocates for this relatively new form of patient care.
For the design, the patients were the most predominant goal: it was really important for them to understand the logo immediately. Her current ones needed to recognize it as home to the care they had been receiving, and new ones would need to see it as welcoming and professional at the same time.
With her increasing liaisons with doctors, therapists and other medical staff, the identity would also need to show a level of experience and proficiency.
Bringing those two elements together was a balancing act: positioning it so it neither looked too warm and fuzzy (such as a spa or retreat), or all business (like an equipment manufacturer, or a hospital). The therapeutic roots had to show...
The Design
It was clear from the beginning that we needed a clean break. We even switched the color scheme after realizing the one from the old logo just didn't fit (even if it did carry a part of the old identity forward).
We discarded everything and started from scratch.
I had a realization it was going to be a lengthy project: there was no real system in place for putting the identity into printed material, or online. Infact, there were no designs for these at all, and Veron had been coping with whatever she'd had on hand. That meant designing not just business cards, but letterhead and envelopes for correspondence; logo's in different sizes for conferences and handouts (with digitally appropiate formatting as needed); invoices for, well, invoicing; and a new website. A big list, and naturally some of this is still in progress...
A part of this (and a whole 'nother project) was the creation of a second identity to sit alongside Masso Institute. Veron has a range of oils and gels (custom blends and single pure strains) that she relies on heavily in her practice. 'Veronica Aromatherapy' is different from the Masso system, yet it's under the same umbrella. You can see that project <here>.
The First Phase
So, I may have got a bit carried away in the beginning: about 200 variations or so later, and it was a crazy mess to look at. Only thing to do: cull and group!
I split them into 6 major themes so that we could quickly discard whole swathes in one go. For that first presentation, I did my best to explain how and why I'd designed them (practically and visually), so that it made sense for Veron. I ended each theme with a selection on business cards so she could see them in action (and could print them out and get a feel for them in the real world).
We quickly zeroed in on the script-like letterforms. Both of us agreed this was the strongest area, aligning nicely with the company, and with the most simple and descriptive forms.
The Second Phase
After narrowing down the selection, it was time to develop the chosen theme further. There were 2 main forms (a herringbone-like one and a script-letter version), and I expanded and refined each one, concentrating on the weighting and style of the lines. I had to do some research on typeface construction at this point. Both were predominantly letter forms, after all. I took cues from type and calligraphy, and tried to account for clarity and rhythm within each.
I wanted each version to be able to work in black and white first, color later.
Herringbone version logo refinement, with notes on balance, rhythm, etc,
Script lettering style logo with similar refinements.
Both were made of one undulating line, to reflect the idea of massage and movement inherent in the treatment. Terminals were thinned, connections were sharpened, and the bowls of swashes and loops were enlarged to allow for legibility under many circumstances.
It was here I started introducing the companion logos for the Veronica Aromatherapy oil brand so that they'd sit well together from the beginning. Above you can see the initial 2 versions of the Masso logos (Herringbone and Script) with their Veronica Aromatherapy counterparts.
Another Element
Originally just the logotype, I had a sneaking feeling that it was not quite enough, and late one night I had an idea for another element in the design to complete it.
I added a vein-like element, influenced from the lymphatic network that Veron had talked about (nearly always shown in green—see below left). There are associations with natural structures and the eye (a tidy circle with the logo in the middle), and the diagrams used in diagnosing color-blindness (see below right). Both of these would end up influencing the color of the final logo.
As a corollary to the Masso logo, the Veronica Aromatherapy logo got an extra element too (see the sketches above right).
above: The two main logo choices with vein backgrounds. The idea was that they could be used both with veins, and without when a simpler, smaller treatment was needed (such as a favicon).
The background ended up doing a funny thing; it sharpened our decision for the logotype. We decided on the looped herringbone-style logo as it fit better with the veins. It had a naturally more pictographic quality, and the veins flow more naturally from the letters. Although the flow of the script letters were nice, there was something a bit too rigid and standardized about it when juxtaposed against the veins.
Next was color… green was the obvious choice to mimic the biological diagrams, but that shade was a bit too obvious. Once you're thinking of coffee, it's hard not to! So I tried a few options:
I think the logo worked in black and white quite well (which was my original aim), but adding a definable company color way was important too. So much of a company's identity is rolled up in the color choice, even if it changes over time and in certain contexts (think Coke's red and white, or Nike's orange). So, for now, I changed the green to a soft aqua green (which already, at least in the US, has a medical feeling), and added a bright mid-orange as a complementary in the 'MI'. This had the added benefit of aping the color blindness charts (see above), and pushes the letters forward by visually bouncing off the blue-green veins.
In the final iterations, I softened up the aqua green and the orange a touch, partly out of necessity for 4-color printing of the business card. Above, you can see several size variations, including a delicate blended version on the right for printing or displaying very large. The type was balanced to match each size, being readable without overwhelming or being overwhelmed.
Below you can see some of the final printable material: first business cards, then letterhead, invoices, envelopes and others. The business stationery was transferred to Pages and Numbers so that Veron could adapt it as necessary.
