Miba Design

Back in the summer of 2008, the web design company I worked for decided it was time to get working on a new website. Although our previous flash splash page (with interactive bubbles) hadn’t stopped the clients constantly flowing in, we thought it would be a good time to finally get our own website up and running.

Along with the new website, we decided it was time for a new logo. After many long discussions (and countless cups of tea) we decided the new logo should be modern, instantly recognisable, distinctive and slightly different. We also decided we would benefit from a slight change of name, from “Gasp Design” to just “Gasp”, as we thought the new name would give us more freedom as we are so much more than just a web design company.

My first step, as with all my logo designs, was sketching. Lots and lots of sketching. Any idea that came into my head, I sketched it down. At work, at home, even in bed, I kept coming up with ideas. With some of them, as soon as I sketched it out, it was quickly apparent they wouldn’t work for us. With others, after a bit of tinkering, I thought I could be on to something. Below are some of the ideas that I came up with, including the one that eventually led to the chosen new logo.

Once we decided on the basis for our new logo, I then got to work on playing around with it, seeing how to make it look better. I started out adjusting the thickness of the lines and the length of the stem of the ‘g’ and ‘p’. I also played around with where the blue line started and ended. I found that letting the blue line continue too far around the ‘s’ made it look more like an ‘o’. Along the way, I also played with the idea of the ‘g’ and ‘p’ being symmetrical.

As well as making the ‘a’ and ‘s’, the blue line is also reminiscent of the way the River Severn meanders through Shrewsbury, Shropshire and encompasses our old office. Other ideas came by way of a grey, bubble-like shape behind the logo and even a 3D version. Below you can see some of the many versions of the logo.

After each adjustment, I printed off a copy to put up around the office, so we could keep looking at it to see what we liked and disliked about it, and if we preferred it to the previous version. If we preferred it, the previous version was taken down. If we were undecided, we left both versions up. After a few days, our walls were covered in print outs but this really helped us decide on how we wanted the logo to look.

In the end, simplicity won. The chosen version isn’t a million miles away from the very first version. But it’s amazing how the extra thickness and the adjustments to the shape of the letters has made so much difference. Although we ended up not straying too far from the original idea, the process of getting there was vital. It gave us a chance to see what worked and what didn’t.

The only concern we had was the legibility of the logo, as some people thought it read ‘goop’. We decided to put it out to the masses and see what they thought on www.ask500people.com, 27% said gasp; and that was good enough odds for us, as by then, in our own heads we’d decided whatever the outcome we were having that logo! For us, we couldn’t understand how anyone could read anything but gasp, but then again, we had the benefit of knowing what it was meant to say. In the end, we decided the look, idea and overall feel of the logo was too good to go to waste.