Sandra reached out to us in late 2022 to discuss a logo design for her new business being started in the seaside suburb of Altona near Melbourne. She was currently in the stages of finalising her shop fit-out plans and needed a suitable logo and brand to complement the shop fit-out design. One of the design constraints needed to use the colour palette already in place with the shop fit-out which was a grey based blue with complementing white accents.
Initial designs explored tens of different typeface options along with the use of an icon symbolising a frozen yoghurt cup. Some design exploration of smiling faces were tested, although these seemed to be too close to Amazon's current logo design and were discarded. Other symbols attempted were soft serve icons, along with some of the toppings which may be available such as cherries and fruit. Many of these had some merit, however when reverse image searching the design/s was carried out, many were already in place in one guise or another and were shelved. The word "Yo Mama" often used in jokes, was also investigated both in terms of a suitable icon or the typeface used itself, however some of the ideas may have been considered inappropriate and were discarded.
When designing an icon or element for a logo or brand, we often refrain from using a graphical representation of the product or service in the logo itself to distance the logo from competitors or to be unique in its design. However on this occasion, with the name of the store being "YoMama", it was felt that a graphical representation was relevant to the finished design to allow the public to put the name together with the product/s on offer.
The final selection for YoMama used an original design not based on any existing fonts. The early stages of design used more abstract versions of the finished logo with the "A" characters not having cutouts at their base (more like a triangle with the top cut off). The base of the "M" character was also experimented with for effect. These were created by using simple shapes and repetitive angles to create a unique logo typeface that is bold with just enough "fun" mixed in.
The "O" character of YoMama was substituted with many different elements and was put in place for a couple of reasons (other than making it look cool!). One was to create an icon which could be used further down the track when the brand was established to identify the store. The other was to create a pause between Yo and Mama so that the custom typeface we designed was legible enough to be recognisable. Not legible enough that it would be looked at quickly and forgotten, but legible enough that it made the audience take an extra second or two to digest the word form. It is this principle we believe creates a memorable logo, where the logo has a quality that commands a second-take which in turn makes it memorable.
The original version of the logo featured a graphical representation of a soft serve. Unfortunately there is a certain brown-coloured icon used abundantly in digital mediums such as text messages which it could be mistaken for! So we created an abstract version of its form but looking squarely down upon it. This was then further developed as concentric circles. The client felt that the concentric circles was a little close to the Target logo, so it was then taken a step backwards in the design process and a spiral was re-adopted with a refined thickness of the lines and negative space. When combined with a cup, the spiral didn't work, although as we had created the new spiral based on the original concentric circle version, it was agreed that the concentric circle version was the best fit for the branding suite.
We are very happy with the end result and really happy to work with a client who was willing to work with a completely custom typeface that will most certainly do an amazing job at identifying the business and brand and if successful, potentially be used in other stores as the business grows and develops.
We love stepping away from the ordinary with logo and branding projects, and we relish at the opportunity to create custom, memorable logos that have the potential to become household names.
