Through upcoming weeks I will be sharing work on a brewery I dreamed up called Nexus Brewing. Each week will contain a new piece of branding, including logos, menus, mockups, packaging, etc. Included with each post will be an overview of the steps I took in creating that week's piece with some brief commentary. Follow along as Nexus Brewing comes together!
The Nexus Logo
nexus (n.): a connection or series of connections linking two or more things; a connected group or series; the central and most important point or place
The vision for Nexus Brewing began humbly as a fascination with the idea of a nexus. Breweries have historically served as gathering places where stories and ideas are shared and memories are made, functioning as social nexus for the communities they serve. I wanted to capture this concept in my brewery's logo, but to do it well I knew I needed to set some rules. I came up with the following:
No common, cliché brewery branding icons (hops, bottles, etc.)
Simple, but not stark
Minimal coloring (three colors maximum)
With these guidelines in place, I began experimenting. After several iterations, I settled on the basic shapes that would form my logo. I used repeating elements to create a sense of self reference in the image and radial symmetry to capture the nexus motif.
To avoid creating an eye in the center, I rotated the inner shape about 20 degrees clockwise. Lines were added to form a broken circle, giving the central image a sense of motion, as though the logo were rotating around the central point.
From here I began to think about color and how to use it. Would I leave it black and white? Go crazy with colors? Find a happy medium? It often works best for me to make multiple versions and then compare the pros and cons of each on the page. The results were pretty diverse.
In the end, simplicity won out. While playing with textures, patterns and gradients was fun, the results didn't fit my original guidelines. Additionally, all the color schemes above seemed to lack focus. For the final copy, most of the color was removed, leaving only the center point colored blue. Adding in the brewery name rounded out the branding, displayed in Arial Rounded Bold, a typeface with nice round edges to convey a casual, but sophisticated feel.
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