What got my design juices flowing today?

I love reading Design blogs, and I came across a new one today – Design Juices.

What really grabbed me was the creative logo:

I love the font, the contrast between bold and light weights for the two words (which now don’t need a space in between), and most of all I love the orange juice and the blue straw that turns the U into a cup. Awesome in its simplicity!

It’s inspired me to try this idea:

It’s certainly not as simple as Design Juices, but it sure was fun to do!

Similarities

I used a similar simple sans serif font (no ‘curly’ ends on the letters), kept the two words together and bolded one of the words for contrast. I used ALL CAPS like the original design.

My design extends above the words (the owl’s head) in the same way the straw extends above the letters in the original design.

Though not obvious at first glance, both designs also use a similar color scheme. Both use white, black, and aqua, and a warm color – orange in the first design, and warm brown in my design.

Differences

I added more contrast by making the word ‘Blue’ blue-colored. I bolded my second word instead of the first, for a couple of reasons. First, it makes sense to make the word ‘Blue’ blue, so that word already stands out. If I made it bold it as well, it would contrast too much, and throw it off-balance.

Also, because the word ‘Blue’ is longer than ‘Owl’, adding the extra weight to the shorter word balances the two words nicely. (I can imagine putting the two words on an old-fashioned pair of scales and seeing them balance each other quite well.)

My owl graphic (the mascot for this site) is much more complex than the simple glass of orange juice and straw. There might be a way to incorporated a very simplistic owl shape into these words, but I love my little owl so I’m keeping him as he is.

I used a warm brown wooden background instead of a black wood. It works well with all the blue, and warms up the whole design. The warmth also works well with the way my owl hugs the letter W.

Finally, I added a drop shadow to my words to make them pop out more.

Who this style would work for

This is quite a modern style. It wouldn’t work for someone selling antiques, but it would work well for people in the technology industry and design industry (I’m in both!).

It would also work well coaches who help their clients to simplify their lives.

I can see it working for people in the health industry, too.

If you’re trying to communicate concepts like “hand-made”, “old-fashioned”, “fancy” or “intricate”, then this style is too clean and simple. You should look at serif or decorative fonts instead.

This style also works best with two words – if you have a long business name (like mine – Blue Owl Web Design Makeovers) you can consider using just part of it. I still need to work out where I’d put the rest of my business name in this design!