The Logo Design Process, Pt. II
I love our logo.
Perfect vector lines. Orion’s Belt as a nudge to Midwest constellations. Pyre symbolism.
Pay no mind to the artist, she decided that she kind of stank as a graphic designer and went into marketing instead.
I’m not often happy with my designs, but I’m really pleased with it. And all of its different uses in media in the last three years - as icons, watermarks, signatures - have taught me that it’s possible to evolve it into something that is more in line with the personality we’ve been cultivating along the way.
A new logo is like a new home. You love it because you see the potential of the space. As you make it your own, the opportunities to remodel show themselves.
When I was designing the first logo, I wanted the nonprofit to be seen as sleek and professional: “We are modern, yet we embrace the traditional.” It was a good ideal, but the more we built the nonprofit, the less it resonated.
Pyres are not a modern invention. Our mission is carved in human history, our visuals are illustrated by hand, and we refuse to use AI in any of our writing. But there’s nothing human in our current logo.
Attempt #1
Handwriting doesn’t always translate well to vector images.
I handwrote the logo on my tablet, pulled it into Affinity Designer, and traced it with the pen tool. It was just mindless enough to run a couple episodes of Frasier while I worked. Then I decided on the official orange color and its connection to the ashes. Finally, I sent it to a few brutally-honest folks for feedback. My personal opinion was that it needed work somehow, but I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint where without stepping away from it.
The feedback I got confirmed my fears: This logo felt a bit like someone tried to pair a hand knit sweater with a sequin skirt. We loved the triangle, the colors, the hidden torch, the word “NORTHERN” -
- but “PYRE” felt like a complete oddball.
So I did what any neurodivergent nerd would do: I fixated on this one imperfection and drove it into the ground.
not pictured: the dozens of other versions/iterations that I didn’t think were good enough to warrant a new layer.
Many attempts later:
I performed the equivalent of crumpling a page and throwing it into the trash, and didn’t touch it for about a month.
When I looked at it again, I realized that I was totally approaching this wrong.
Warning: Design Analysis Ahead
All those old versions felt so slapdash. I’d been quickly sketching an idea in a raster program (Clip Studio Paint) and then quickly tracing in a vector program (Affinity Design). I wasn’t giving the sketch more time to look like an actual font. It was stuck in the uncanny valley of “That’s not a sketch, but it’s not a font either.” It needed to feel more intentional (barf, but sometimes that’s the only word you can use).
I re-examined the “carving” theme and decided that we aren’t holding stone knives: we’re holding iron chisels.
Our New Logo
I cleaned it up, tweaked the sizes and spacing, added more symbolism (and a darker version of the bright orange we liked), and repeated a few of the typeface elements.
Hand drawn logo, hand drawn into a vector program. Acknowledgement of tradition without rejection of modernity. In short - our nonprofit.
