The 717 In Good Taste logo design

2009 has become the year of creating logos for me. Earlier this year I created the logo for the Jewish Community Choice Awards in the Community Review. Then I sat down and finally hammered out the Octoberson Design logo that I kept thinking would be a good name for me to use when I do freelance work. I almost forgot about this logo until I was updating my blog last night.

I want to start off by saying I will not take full credit for the entire design of the logo. Credit for refining this logo also belongs to Lisette Magaro, the art director at the magazine. She and I collaborated on this idea and in the end we met half way into what became the 717 In Good Taste Awards logo. I will, on the other hand, admit that I had a hand in naming the award. When our publisher, Patti Boccassini, was kicking around ideas with the art department for our newest award, I just threw the idea of "in good taste" at her off the cuff. Each person was going to go into the project with their own ideas and see what they could come up with, the name was even up for grabs at that point. When it was all said and done, I wish I could admit to creative brilliance, but instead it was just a matter of who had some free time to tinker with design ideas at work. I took an hour or so to play around with concepts, but still kept to the "in good taste" idea I offered up at lunch. Because I was the one who had the time to spend on it, that's how the award got its name.

The thinking behind the logo, from my starting point, was that our Simply the Best logo for Harrisburg Magazine was a giant square so I wanted to avoid using another square shape in the logo. Instead I started with the initial idea of a plate and going from there. I created the basics for the plate in Illustrator, a program that I have been more and more creative with over the last year. Yes, I know, creating a plate isn't exactly the craziest thing that could be created using Illustrator, but, for me, this was thinking outside the box and not just figuratively.

I'm very pleased that the design of this award is distinctly different from out Simply the Best logo and really says something for a dining award. I think it's a very clean and warm design and I really appreciated the input and vision that Lisette brought to the piece. I've also included a full page promotion that ran in our June issue of 717 Magazine that promotes the awards. Again, I can't take credit for the design of the full page promotion, but I wanted to show off the logo being used in an application.