In the Melbourne, Florida area, people take their grass seriously; which explains the abundance of thriving lawn-care teams you see here every day. The owner of one such (new) lawn-care business contacted me a couple weeks ago about establishing a visual identity that would help set to him apart from the rest.
Early talks got us down to the fact that virtually every trick in the book has already been well worn out, when it comes to lawn-care logo cliches. Dark green colors, blades-of-grass motifs, trees, lawnmowers, Florida sunsets, so on and so on, have all been done to death. Bearing all that in mind, the image below is the first round of sketches I submitted for the approval of the client.
PGM Logo: Sketches
From those sketches, my client decided a clean, corporate-style logo would be best for his target demographic: large contract deals, outside of the private sector. The cluster of hexagons was the way to go, being sharp and “scientific” looking (precise!). We later flipped the cluster upside down to better suit a surrounding ring of text, depicting the full business title. I knew it would need a strong contemporary edge, and that lead us to a font called Planet Kosmos. It was as close as we could get to perfect, though there were some things that really clashed with the rest of the design once we saw the lettering in place. Using Adobe Illustrator, the font was made regular (as opposed to italic), had its diagonals altered to be flush with those of the surrounding design, and had several weight adjustments made to thick and thin strokes for consistency and readability. Below is the result.
PGM Logo: Rough
Last but not least, we needed a splash of color. The client was initially set on earth tones and the incorporation of a bold red hue, but after talks of printing concerns and color theory, he ultimately sought the familiar green instead. I presented the following image as a choice of potential greens (and their corresponding grayscale values), but wound up giving them all of them in case they had a change of heart about a particular shade sometime later on.
PGM Logo: Colors
I like the design – always fun to see someone else’s sketchbook, too (I should probably work mine into my site, as well).
Which green did the client choose, by the way? And, the letters inside the hexagrams, is that a font or hand-drawn?
Nice work!!!
Initially, they went with my recommendation of of the 2nd from the left (see the final image in the post), but a few days after the job was finished, they changed their mind and went with 4th from the left. I sent them a black-only version upon hearing that, so that they’d have an alternative to go with for faxes and Xeroxes.
The font was Planet Kosmos — There’s a link to it in the 3rd paragraph of the post. It’s only available in an italic slant, however, so I reworked the three letters in illustrator to de-italicize it and clean up some errant angles.
Thanks for the feedback, Mike — Good to hear from you!
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