Imani

Last weekend I finally got in touch with Martha, the woman I will be helping start her business in Namibia this summer! She told me a little bit about her plans for the business, "Imani," so I could get started thinking about design work.

She has registered the business as Imani Investments CC, made up of Imani Properties, Imani Books, Imani FM, and Imani Café. In Swahili, Imani means faith. Martha told me that her vision for the logo and identity of the business is to reflect the themes of faith and illumination. Her main target market is youth and young adults, and she wants everything to feel alive, vibrant, and perhaps even a little funky.

Needless to say, I was stoked to start coming up with some ideas for the logo. Without a whole lot of information about the business itself and with communication being kind of hindered by the thousands of miles between us, I decided the best thing to do would be to start coming up with ideas, see what Martha and people think of them, and proceed developing from there.

I started with a pen and a blank sheet of paper. (Go figure. I should really do this more often). I wrote down some of what Martha had told me and jotted down definitions of the words illuminate and faith.


Next, with some visual inspiration from Google image searches, I started to sketch out different ideas for how to visualize the things I wrote down. Nothing was stupid or wrong; any stroke or shape was a potential idea. Trying to reflect themes of light, faith and celebration, I sketched.


From there, I took an "i" and started playing with it a little. Thinking about what an "i" could represent. I was excited to see an i come to life on the page, and got to a point where the i became a kind of abstracted celebratory figure. From there I decided to start playing around in illustrator.


Taking my abstracted i, I created the raw, sketched figure and type you see above. As you'll notice in a lot of the designs, I was really drawn to more raw, less rigid styles. Here, the i becomes a figure full of joy, with its head turned up to the sky. The sketched arms also have a lighthouse kind of illumination to them. I know there is a disconnect between the thickness of the "i" and the "mani," but perhaps when taken in the context of Africa, it will not be difficult for people to make the connection. This is one of the directions I like the most.

On the bottom left, I took the i from the first direction and made it a little more corporate and streamlined. It's probably a little too much like a sports drink right now, but it might have some potential.

To the right of that is a fairly simple direction, where the font does most of the work. I like the roughness and life of it, though.


From there I got pretty excited as I started to take the rays of light and actually play with breaking apart the letter forms. This resulted in something that again felt very raw and vibrant. To me, this effect as used in the middle row definitely seems to have a lively African style to it, but I don't really claim to know anything about Africa right now. The last thing I want to do is to create a design that is just a reflection of American stereotypes of what is "African" (he says while listening to The Lion King soundtrack). That being said, I do really like these designs. I think they're definitely different, but seem to have a kind of energy and illumination to them.

My roommate and Graphic Design student extraordinaire, Dan, told me that he liked this direction the most, and recommended that I try a few different versions of it. In the last two designs above I tried using some arches and straight lines.


Next I started experimenting with the usage of a hand, raised in a kind of worship. I don't know how spiritual or secular the logo should be, but I thought I'd give this idea a go. I obviously love using white space, and after I liked how the arm inside the "n" turned out, I decided trying the same thing with the figure of a celebrating person.

Last night, Dan sent me links to a few logo-inspiration sites and I started to check them out. When I did, I realized I needed to do a little more work, and should consider a logo that has a stronger symbolic element, something that the actual type could accompany.

I thought that a kind of sunburst would be the best shape to experiment with, so in my free time today I played around with these forms. Some of them are similar, some are very different. The ones formed with i's in the top left are definitely more corporate than some of others that look a bit more tribal. I can't really decide which of these I prefer. I know too much flourish is not good, like the two in the center of the second row. Note that the word "imani" would still appear under or next to one of these shapes.


Anyway, it would be great to get some feedback about what people's thoughts are, what you like, what you don't like, or any other directions to experiment with.

Don't worry, color (and who knows, maybe gradients) will come later. Right now it's just about the style, emotion and message evoked by the designs. The next step will involve much closer precision and focus.

Any and all critiquing will be appreciated, even if what you say is wrong.

Thanks so much! I hope everybody had a wonderful weekend. I'll try and write a regular post sometime this week!