It began as bug-a-BOO but that name was already taken. The product was a ring sling that moms could carry their babies in. The entrepreneur is my wife. We settled on the name bug-a-ROO because the slings actually resemble a kangaroo’s pouch. Anyway, we thought it was pretty clever and we had already started calling our new little boy bug-a-boo. It stuck and she’s been making the things (+other baby products) for over a year now.
One of the curses of being a graphic designer is that EVERYTHING must have a logo. The good thing about that is that you can develop your wife’s side business into a brand. We began with a quick, rough logo. My wife refuses to capitalize anything so naturally, the logo would be all lower case. I thought the brand should reflect her care-free, cheerful personality so rather than searching for the right font, I sketched the type with Illustrator’s pencil tool (when’s the last time you used that one?). I fashioned a quick outline of a bug in the background and called it a day. It worked for a little while but I started cringing every time she asked me to print her some more business cards.
I began sketching ideas for a revision. I came up with some great concepts but was having trouble translating it into crisp, clean vector lines. As a designer who prefers those wonderful vector lines to their jaggy raster counterparts, I had to resist the temptation to scan the sketches and start tracing. That’s cheating isn’t it? Well, after several frustrating attempts, I fired up my Epson and started tracing.
This process has really opened a lot of possibilities for me. I realized that no matter how complicated the idiosyncratic anomalies of hand drawn images are, they have to break down into simple lines at some level. This could only strengthen my design skills. One of the complaints about the vector preference is that things tend to be too neat. It would be great to master the ability to force vectors to behave and look more like rasters (without the scanning, of course). All of this comes from a distain for the size and color limitations you have with a raster image.
Anyhoo, the results were quite nice. I ended up with a lovely logo for my wife that reflects her personality and business. You can see the process below. For gift ideas for moms and moms-to-be, visit bug-a-roo.
Original Bug-a-roo logo
A Sketch
Another Sketch
THE Sketch
Bug-a-roo Logo
Tags: baby slings, design, graphic design, Illustrator, logo, pencil tool, raster, ring slings, vector
