I jumped at the chance to re- brand Ayloffs Primary School in Elm Park Essex. The school itself is going through a long drawn out merger to become a super primary school in two years time.

The brief:

- 2 colour logo, yellow and purple with green as a second option.
- Vectorised logo (no problem)
- Would like to see a tree or an elm leaf incorporated in the logo
- Must be fun
- Also consider the list of name research that had been created by the students.
- Possibly contain children in the logo

Sounded like a great brief but I could see problems emerging already. Trying to create something fun with the use of two flat spot colours (especially yellow and purple) was going to be tricky.

Another challenge was the elm tree, after doing some research, I found that each one looks completely different to the other (unlike say, an Oak tree).

The third challenge was the children. I had a few ideas involving silhouettes of children running and jumping. How was I going to get reference photos of 5-11 year olds? Taking random photos of children is not the best idea.

Theres no such thing as a problem, only a solution. Off I went.

After creating 7 different concept ideas, I choose 6 to show the client although I said I would only provide 5. Typically out of 5 designs I would expect that 2 are hated, 1 is liked, 1 is very appealing and 1 is almost perfect. Overall its safe to say that 3 will definitely go through to the next round with 1 already being a firm favourite.

The problems I expected above all came true, with the biggest problems being the flat colours (no gradients) and a new problem discovered through experimentation.

A tree is typically and most recognizable as green and brown. Creating a tree silhouette in another colour (say purple) is fine, the image of a tree is so powerful that’s its easily conceived as a tree BUT its not very fun or modern.

Answer: create an abstract tree BUT

An abstract tree using the colour purple or yellow doesn’t look like a tree.
After much deliberation heres the best of the 6 I presented.

I had my favourites out the selection and thought they would go down well with the Head mistress but this did turn out to be one of those rare occasions where none of them went down well.

After another chat I found out that what the school actually wanted was something a lot more childish. They showed me a mock up drawn by a teacher and asked me to reproduce it.

After many minor alterations and some professional amendments here’s the final piece.