An artist with a hard candy design shell.
An artist with a hard candy design shell.
Studio 129 is the home of Glenn County Office of Education’s (GCOE) audio recording studio and Recording Arts Program. My client was an old friend that helped design and build the studio: Brian Berry - Assistant Engineer/Studio Technician. He came to me to help them come up with a new identity separate from the GCOE’s.
Studio 129 is the home of Glenn County Office of Education’s (GCOE) audio recording studio and Recording Arts Program. My client was an old friend that helped design and build the studio: Brian Berry - Assistant Engineer/Studio Technician. He came to me to help them come up with a new identity separate from the GCOE’s.
My first concept was based on some sketches Brian had done as well as some historical imagery of the Orland Arch. This arch is on the North side of Orland as you enter the town on Old Highway 99.
While the arch didn’t work, Brian liked the idea of using the old shield road sign shape. We could reference the local history of Old Highway 99 and I-5, and the overt idea of a “road to audio.” I just now made that up.
These are examples of some of my visual research.
Based on the visual research, I came up with several shield shapes to make sure the studio had maximum logo flexibility: Solid with outline, Solid with inner outline and solid. Plus there were two text lockups and one small outline shield.
The mockups of the shield shape demonstrate the range of application possibilities. Business papers, t-shirts, cards, and stamps.
We were on track and moving forward with the shield, even though the Director of the program still wasn’t fully on board. As fate would have it, Brian had some guitar picks made with the vertical text lockup on them. He sent me picture showing me how great they looked.
Lightbulbs, and some fainting. Me: Hey we should use that as the shape for the logo instead of the shield. It has the musical reference and clearly the logotype fits right in there!
Luckily the logotype lockups worked great and I quickly came up with a series of pick shaped concepts. It pretty much made itself.
At one point Brian said that the Director (that had been resistant to the shield) came in and saw the guitar picks and pointed out how great he thought they were. Then he added, “now that would make a good logo.” Brian replied with “well, actually, Steve did a series based off of these.”
This was a fun, sometime frustrating project, which really most should be. In the end Studio 129 got a great flexible identity, and I got to do a solid for a friend.
From Brian:
"Our recording studio has two major aspects. We operate a non-profit audio engineering school as well as a full service commercial recording studio. We were searching for a way to separate the commercial side and promote it as its own entity. I approached Steve with our dilemma; his advice was to design a logo along with varying aspects that would serve as a brand for our commercial business. Following many discussions and changes from the original idea, he created not only a logo that was well received by everybody involved, but a family of designs that have fit every marketing challenge we have encountered to date. We really can’t thank him enough for his patience and creativity, we are truly happy with the results.”
Brian Berry,
Studio 129
129recording.com