helvetic brands

LatitudeSouth is a new enterprise offering a fresh direction in legal services outsourcing. Working with clients all over the world, their New Zealand origins were of importance to the company. Allow me to invite you through a brief overview of the creative process of designing their new logo.

Visual inspiration
LatitudeSouth’s slogan is ‘fresh direction’ and this was the starting point of my brainstorming. After researching all things in the South Pacific, I noticed there were many similarities between the island country’s contour and that of a boomerang. The idea of direction with this concept was instant for me and pursued multiple iterations.

The color scheme was directly inspired by maps I had accumulated during the brainstorming and research process.

The finalised color scheme.

Logo development
It was important to LatitudeSouth that they have a stand alone logotype that was unique to them alone. I had a few ideas for the type sketched and was able to start on making it come to life. After setting up a working grid in Illustrator, I started creating the letters but soon decided that it would be a lot more artistically stimulating for me to draw on the grid I had just drafted. I think it is really important in my creative process to change things up every time I start a new project. Below was a photo I took for a new experiment I have started called the daily insight image on twitter where I snapshot a moment in my working day.

This sketching allowed me to explore an idea I had for flipping the t’s but found this a little forced later on. I scanned the completed type sketch and placed it into Illustrator.

I then went on to place the grid I had created over my sketch and worked at cleaning up the design with the aid of simple geometry.

Once this process was completed I finally had the letters ready.

Another day in the daily insight image collection. It was also at this moment I received a very positive client reaction.

“ These look great, really impressive.“
Andrew Hamilton
Director, Latitude South

The letters were complete but the legibility was suffering still due to a strict grid which allowed for no optical kerning. The kerning for the most part stayed as I had originally planned it but with a few exceptions with the more curved letters like the ‘S’, ‘a’ and ‘o’.

The type and symbol complete, I then worked them into the same grid to get a harmonious combination of both.

Final solution
The final design will be on LatitudeSouth’s newly designed website shortly. The identity solution is that of an dynamic arrow shape which was inspired by a boomerang and also has the shape of a simplified New Zealand contour. I wish them all the best with their relaunch.

I hope you found this brief insight into my process an interesting read and welcome any of your questions and feedback.