A MAN WITH A VAN WITH 3 PLANS
10 minute read
One time a very intense but otherwise lovely gentleman got in touch with me about designing some logos for his three new business ideas.
All three ideas were variations on a delivery service and were all to be run out of the same van.
His first idea was for a laundry delivery service.
He passed me a scrawled image of his idea of what the logo should look like.
It was eye in the center of a wave in the ocean.
His second idea was for a short term letting key drop off service.
Basically a service for Air Bnb hosts, So they could have him deliver the house/apartment keys to the guests instead of meeting them directly.
His third and final idea was for a standard delivery service but with an emphasis on zero emissions.
He was very proud of his brand new electric van and talked about it at length when if prompted.
His idea for this logo was 4 leaves all coming from the center of the logo and where the stems made a ‘X’ shape.
I happily took on the challenge and tried my best to bring his ideas to life along with some of my own ideas.
These were the two designs I came up with in the weekend I worked on them.
The first being his idea that I tried to pull into the digital world.
The second being my idea of what it could look like. I decided run with the idea of a circle and blue logo.
So I designed a kind of a water within a wheel image.
The inner wheel representing the washing of the laundry and the outside representing the wheel of the van.
I liked the idea of the distinct three wavy water lines that could be attached to other deliverables without the black car wheel and still be recognizable.
These were the ideas I came up with for the short term letting key delivery service.
Obviously I felt the key image should be prominent.
The umbrella idea came from a personal experience of mine.
When I had booked an AirBnb away one time in the Irish countryside myself and my girlfriend at the time were stuck waiting on the host outside the house for hours.
Of course the location being Ireland, It was lashing rain the entire time.
So in addition to this damp personal memory of mine I also like the security an umbrella represents.
It says ‘We have you covered’ to both the Host and the Guest.
The first logo here was the one based on his design. 4 leafs within a box with their stems forming an ‘x’.
The second was my idea. Looking at tire threads I noticed some of them had these branching grooves that almost look like the branches of a tree.
So to emphasize the idea of zero emissions and the green effect that has on the world.
I thought a growing tree would be a fitting representation, although an over simplification of the issue at large.
So you might wonder what he thought of my logos.
Well after I sent them over with the note that these were not necessarily finished and revisions can be made if required.
He replied with a long email explaining how happy he was and how much he liked the one the tree. (assuming as it gave him another reason to talk about his electric van)
I replied that I appreciated his feedback and asked him how he would like to continue.
But, radio silence. I never got a response.
The last I heard he had moved back to Poland.
So maybe some where there’s an electric van out there in Europe with a bad JPEG of one of these logos stuck to the side of it I don’t know.
Lessons learned:
Get some sort of payment up front, even if it’s just the brainstorming period.
Don’t bring up his electric van.
All Company names that came attached to his ideas have been changed for the sake of this post.
