Inside Third & Bond: Week 94
This week the Hudson bloggers circle back on the great logo debate…The Third + Bond logo, unveiled. No matter which old flames show up to cry about how they were afraid to say those three little words before, or to complain that this was not the #1 pick during the voting in Week 48, we…
This week the Hudson bloggers circle back on the great logo debate...The Third + Bond logo, unveiled. No matter which old flames show up to cry about how they were afraid to say those three little words before, or to complain that this was not the #1 pick during the voting in Week 48, we will not budge. This is the one we love. Bachelorette Jillian got her pick and we got ours. Why did we pick this one over the wisdom of the crowd? What was the process in eliminating suitors? How is it that the café leche and orange logo was the last man standing but since the rose ceremony has transformed its colors?
Let’s take a look back…
In Week 48, we showed you 8 logos. Some of them included leaves to connote environmental sustainability. Some of them made clever combinations of the number 3 and letter B. One took advantage of the intersection of streets. And another was… well, so boring we’ve already forgotten it. There were a lot of choices. After getting your thoughts, we reaffirmed our goals for the logo.
We wanted a logo that gave a quick impression of our story while also being simple and graphically strong.
Our story is about being a modern adaptation of the brownstone or townhome. The logo needed clean lines (read: modern) and subtlety (read: contextual new construction). Strong but not noisy. The square in this logo has clean lines and the plus is crisp. The square itself is defined with certain boundaries. It isn’t flashy, it is solid.
To test graphic portability, we looked at the top 3 logos in a mock-up of the NYT classified section. In black and white, this logo popped the most. It also had the advantage of going easily from positive to negative (a black square with white text or vice versa).
Probably 95% of the team was convinced to go with the + logo and yet the hold-outs wouldn’t budge from their opinion that the logo looked like it belonged in a skateboard shop. It wasn’t the kind of logo that made you want to buy a home. It made you want to grab your bro and go ollie a twelve-set.
It had been easy to get rid of the 3/B logos because they didn’t say anything other than that we could be clever with similarly shaped text. But getting rid of the #1 voted logo was tough. Many of us responded to its elegant font. The leaves growing from the d were better integrated than in any of the other green logos. And that’s what the crowd told us… or did it? We wondered if the voting was skewed because this logo was most prominently displayed.
And then those leaves started looking a little too cute. And when placing the logo on a page, it always seemed to need a box or a line to sit on. The negative space was too undefined. We tried putting it into a box and giving more definition to the leaves. But the logo just looked awkward and busy. And it lost the lovely light quality present in the white background.
So, we looked for ways to warm-up the skateboard shop logo. We tried taking the font from the other logo and dropping it into the square. But it looked stunted instead of graceful. We also tried the softening impact of a leaf. But then the plus and the leaf competed as symbols.
We went back to the original font and talked about different colors, especially getting rid of the orange and deepening the brown.
The instant we saw the dark green (so dark it looks brown) square and the spring green + we knew this logo was the one for us. The new colors transformed the logo instantaneously. The colors were warm and spoke of hearth and home. The green plus reminds you that the project is environmentally sustainable without hitting you over the head with it, or assuming that is your top priority. The resulting logo is gender neutral, recognizable, and confident in its own sturdiness.
Just as Jillian was Jason’s third place pick and then won the grand prize of love, the third place logo of your choice has become the center of our attention and the only logo in our hearts.
Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-93 [Brownstoner]
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Alison,
For some reason I missed the post from week 48. Now looking at it, I’d have to sadly admit that I agree with the majority of voters. I think it works especially well in the “green” context without trying too hard to convince the prospective buyers. If anything, it makes me think of a tree-lined block more so than the environmentally friendly materials you’ve used throughout the construction process.
I’ve never paid too much attention to the logos that new developments choose, but the Belltel logo for some reason stuck in my mind. Clearly something like that wouldn’t work for your project.
In any case, I believe (or at least hope) you would do just fine with any of the original eight logos. Which means that, perhaps, you did end up selecting the right logo after all, if nothing else, for the practical reasons you’ve listed (even though it’s a bit anonymous and was probably conceived by the same logic that gave us the 100GOLD logo. Sorry.)
heck,
if you had to pick a logo from the first 8 which would you choose? is there a project that has a logo you consider to be top notch?
Perhaps I need to clarify my comment on the importance of a logo. I meant to say it wasn’t important in this context, i.e. it’s a very local project where potential buyers may pay attention to a lot of things, but it will not be the logo. The one place where it might take on a little more meaning is in various advertisements, but, again, the logo simply fails to stand out from the rest (which may not be a bad thing, but then what’s the point?)
http://businessguysonbusinesstrips.com/?p=84
I appreciate the explanation of why they chose a logo that was not the popular choice. It was smart to ask the followers of the blog what they thought and then use that feedback to further their decision. I would agree that this logo is perhaps more simple than one would expect, but I feel it ties together the components favored in the other logos. I also completely disagree with the importance of a logo. Make a power point of famous logos and ask a group of middle school students to shout out the companies. The students suddenly become aware of the power of a logo – the golden arches, the Nike swoosh, any car company or athletic team. So, it would make sense that Hudson would take so much time deciding on colors, fonts, leaves or no leaves – what it will look like in a black and white advertisement. I appreciate the explanation on how they came to the simplistic yet clear and bold logo. I say great work for the Third and Bond team!
That’s a lot of thought for a simple logo. But, I hear you, clean and modern for a clean and modern building.
You know guys, I’m usually on your side. But this logo is pretty bland. I’d say it’s Dell-bland. Having said that, I don’t think a logo is all that important.
Really? You chose this one?
Ditto what martis said.
Hard to say… which was ‘better’ the Bird Blog or the Third+Bond Blog.
Both seem to be neverending. Where’s Atreyu and Falkor?