This was my first ever freelancing job! That being said, my methods of working with clients have drastically improved.
When Ralph Gifford, the president of Gifford Consulting, LLC. and a family friend of mine, came to me asking if I'd like to take a shot at creating a logo for his company, I absolutely jumped at the opportunity. Working with Mr. Gifford threw me right into the fire; he had an idea of what he wanted the logo to look like, so I tried to improve upon his idea by adding design elements, experimenting with colors, and going through many different variations, as you will see below. All discussions with the client were either in person or via email. Let's get started!
When Ralph Gifford, the president of Gifford Consulting, LLC. and a family friend of mine, came to me asking if I'd like to take a shot at creating a logo for his company, I absolutely jumped at the opportunity. Working with Mr. Gifford threw me right into the fire; he had an idea of what he wanted the logo to look like, so I tried to improve upon his idea by adding design elements, experimenting with colors, and going through many different variations, as you will see below. All discussions with the client were either in person or via email. Let's get started!
So, the starting point was what you see above. I had originally begun with sketches, but sadly the sketchbook has since been misplaced. This page will be updated if I find my original sketches.
At the time, I was very busy with school work, and luckily Mr. Gifford was very understanding about this. I would typically have started with more diverse ideas. The initial idea that he wanted to try out was something similar to the "copyright" symbol (©) except using his company initials. This is what I came up with. The client already used the font "Georgia" as his company font, so that was required in the logo. Another requirement was that I had to use his company colors, which were simply RGB values and not any Pantone or RAL colors (the maroon was a specific RGB measurement, and the black was 100K black for printing and #000000 black for screens).
Mr. Gifford felt that this was a good start, but not good enough! We continued to brainstorm together.
Mr. Gifford wanted to see something having to do with the letters overlapping, as well as something other than the copyright symbol idea that he initially thought he wanted, so I began to take the ideas and branch out in different directions. The results of this are shown above.
We went back and forth with slight alterations to each of the variations, and eventually, I introduced a new idea, where the G and C were diagonal from each other (shown above). This really sparked Mr. Gifford's interest, so we began to roll with that. Mr. Gifford was no longer interested in options 1 and 5, so we scrapped those entirely and moved along with the new idea. Get ready for some busy images below as we began to fine-tune our ideas.
Looking closely at the above image, you can see how we began to fine-tune the ideas. He didn't like 4, 5, 9, or 10, as the C sat too low for his liking (which I agreed with).
More fine-tuning. Instead of centering the overall shape of the C over the bar of the G, I centered the topmost inside curve of the C over the bar, which we discussed in person.
Next, we tried making the design all maroon, as seen above. The top row, as before, has a white stroke to differentiate the letters, whereas the middle row has no stroke and the letters appear as one unified shape.
From here, Mr. Gifford felt as though we were at a good point where he was satisfied with his options. He asked me if I had a favorite design, to which I replied with: "If I had to choose, then I would choose #2 with the black C and the red G, because with everything being red, it really just blends everything together and your eye doesn't know where to look first. With the C being black, it gives a path for your eyes to follow, and allows for a sense of hierarchy that emphasizes your name in maroon."
He agreed with me, but he felt that with the black and maroon option your eye perceived the C to be bigger than the G. I agreed, and we decided to come back to it the next day with clear minds.
Having slept on it, we both decided that option 3 in all maroon looked the best and most well-balanced. We met in person soon thereafter and came up with the following designs:
After some more discussion and alterations, this is the final logo that we came up with:
From here, Mr. Gifford and I worked on his stationery items. First I tackled his business card:
Followed by his letterhead, website header, and memo sheets, which I was not able to locate the files for (keep in mind that this was nearly 4 years ago as of today, as the project was in 2014, when I was a sophomore in High School!).
At the end of this endeavor, although I was adamant about this job being a favor, Mr. Gifford insisted on paying me for my effort. Being 15 years old and this being my first ever real-world design job, I was absolutely stoked to receive the check from him, and I will be forever grateful for his generosity! As a fun added touch, he also had hats made with his new logo, and he brought one to me at my Eagle Scout ceremony. This design job basically helped me set an overall goal for my career: Freelancing.
