Loose pencil sketches and reference to an encyclopaedia gave rise to a meaningful use of curves, with an interesting positive-negative interplay of forms. As lead Designer at web agency, Equinox e-Business Solutions
Concept Sketches
Case Study
No! To swooshy, satellitey things…
There were a hell of a lot of swooshy-logos doing the rounds in 1990, and a glance through the appointments section of the paper (before the recession recently hit) evidenced that the plague hadn’t abated:
Company name—typed into a graphics programme—Saturn-like swoosh plonked around it. Skewer an orbiting satellite for extra good measure.
It seemed to do equally well for tech companies as it did for Dry-Cleaners and skip hirers. It may have been inspired by the Nike ‘Swoosh’ and there were and still are lots of those, but internet/web/tech also seemed somehow to equal SPACE, so the satellite/planet/saturn ring motif seemed to merge with the swoosh.
Needless to say, I did not want to add another one to the growing and already bloated pile of terrible logos.
Research & Design Concept
With the Equinox logo I first found out exactly what an Equinox was—apart from just being an impressively sciencey-sounding word. It means: “Equal Day and Night”. When the equator of the Earth and sun are in-line.
So I sketched a circle—skirting terribly close to terrible logo territory—then another circle overlapping it—and drew a horizontal line through the two. Sun—earth—equators lined-up. I then noticed that when the one in front was white and the one behind was filled, what do you know?—it all looked fortuitously like an E. So in a couple of minutes I had the concept! The sun behind was warm yellow, and you had the yellow E. I picked a contrasting warm blue for the rest of the elements
Typography
The final touch was getting the typography right. I didn’t want to design a font to match the E shape, because I thought it’d look a bit silly. (Think: Heavy Metal band or surfer tattoo) So I chose a chunky, strong and pretty plain sans-serif for the ‘equinox’ bit. It contratsed rather than clashed with the ‘E’ motif because it was pretty neutral and plain. I re-shaped it quite a bit.
Now, I have to tip my hat to my boss, Gerry, who strolled over and suggested that I “merge a couple of the letters—so they don’t just look like you typed them out”. That proved to be the most time-consuming element to get working, but that was OK with me. I also reworked the ‘i’ to fit the rest of the forms.
Finally, for the tagline, I used the same font—un-adapted—and leaned it right to add a bit of movement, dynamism and contrast.
Conclusion
Looking at it now, many years later, It’s a clean, quirky logo—with a bit of science behind it, and I still like it. Could I have left out the horizontal yellow bar that joined the ‘E’ to the ‘e’? Maybe.