Below are some of the logos I created over the years. This is by no means everything, but it gives you an idea of what I have done.
Gametrader
I had a lot of fun creating these four logos. The brief was simple: “Create a logo that would appeal to gamers of all ages”. I’m not an avid gamer, and I tend to do 2-4 hours of gaming every two weeks, so I wasn’t too unfamiliar with the gaming industry. Since my client was mostly selling consoles and physical games, including a host of retro gaming gear, I thought it best to research the intended target market for guidance.
It turned out that there was a plethora of market research available on the target market. For most part, my client’s intended customers were men aged between 25 and 48 (this was in 2018). They grew up playing games on 8-bit to 64-bit consoles. This gave me a good starting point and I was able to develop the logos below. This was a rare instance where the client was completely stumped and he took about a week to settle (reluctantly) on one logo, namely the one at the bottom.
ICELDA
This was a logo I was asked to do for a research unit. They had an idea of some basic elements they wanted to incorporate into the logo. The names tend to be quite long so they tend to reduce the length with an acronym. In most cases though the units want both the acronym and the actual name in the same logo, adding more information to the logo, which is usually avoided when creating commercial logos.
That being said, I enjoyed working on this logo. It came together a lot easier than I thought.
Greatstays Guesthouse
This Johannesburg-based client had a friend who sometimes flew in from Cape Town to do business in the area. Their home was ideally situated in a safe suburban area only a 5-minute drive from OR Tambo International Airport, with various convenient access points to the greater Johannesburg Metropol.
Realising this, my client converted part of his house into a guesthouse. His home had a lavish garden, a private pool, and lots of room to expand the house. Greatstays was born within a few months and I was tasked with producing their branding and website. Below is the logo. I, unfortunately, lost the website files years ago when one of my archive hard drives broke.
Injineli Consulting
I did a lot of work for various foundries and engineering works over the years, due to the high concentration of such businesses in the area where I was living at the time. For reasons unknown to me, this one to this day stands out for me more than others. It’s simple and quite elegant. The small caps create an interesting rhythm in the logo due to the dots on the “i” and “j” letters. On a side note, “Injineli” is Xhosa for “engineer”.
Freedom of Expression Institute
I once designed a poster for the Freedom of Expression Institute. While working on it I had an idea for a simple icon that could potentially be used as a logo if they wanted to rebrand – let’s just say that I don’t think their logo is well-suited for their organisation.
Paper vandal
At the end of my second year at university, I thought I had learned enough to start a little business over the recess periods. Like many students, I wanted to make a bit of extra money to have fun with my friends. To make my enterprise seem more legitimate I needed branding. It was also a good opportunity to add something extra to my portfolio. Paper Vandal was born from this exercise and it remained my branding for five years, until I was offered a full-time position at a university and had to start pursuing my postgraduate degrees in earnest.
At the time of the logo’s inception, I was watching a lot of Japanese animation. I was completely enamoured with a series by the name of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It had a lot of religious iconography in it, one of which was these enourmous iridescent wings the robots spread at a crucial moment in the series. I liked them enough to make my own version of them and incorporate them into my logo. I don’t think it has aged particularly well, but at the point I was proud of it and received a lot of positive feedback.
