Brad Hatfield is a keyboardist, pianist, arranger, and Emmy Award winning composer based in Boston. He began a music collective called the Brad Hatfield Music Collective featuring his collective's music on DISCO. With the slogan 'composing your story' he wanted a logo to showcase that this collective did more than create music, they composed stories.
His goal was for his logo to feel approachable and fun, stand out amongst a crowd, and be brightly colored. As the process went he began to find he was more attracted to the sleekness of a black and white logo and preferred to go in that direction.
Using inspiration from a variety of music types such as Jazz, Classical, and Neo soul I developed a logo for his DISCO page. The process went through a variety of iterations beginning and ending in black and white. Below is that iterative process through the final design.
Whenever I begin a logo project, I throw things at the wall through sketching to see what aspects of each sketch the client likes and where to move forward. I show a variety of color, black and white, shape, and concept. This allows the client to pick and choose from each what is standing out.
The feedback I received was that the hand lettering was exciting and the musical notes were as well. He also really liked the circular shape as it represented the music bar lines wrapped up together to form a shape. It touched on the their slogan of 'composing you story'. He also wanted to see what the logo would look like with the slogan as a part of it.
From that feedback, I iterated.
The musical bar used in iteration of BHMC with music notes sketch
Though he liked the BHMC music notes he felt the circle with the slogan was more fitting to his style. We went forth with that version of his logo. Additionally, he originally wanted bright colors and boldness but after seeing these iterations he was hoping to see what black and white would look like. Finally, he began to feel the letters were not professional-looking enough but wanted to keep the friendliness. I turned to using an adobe typeface and manipulating it to fit that friendly desire. Below is what came of this feedback.
This is what we landed on. He loved the sleekness, the friendly but professional typography that plays with the outside circle, and also what the circle represents. We kept the slogan at the bottom but also allowed for that to be removed.
The final outcome - his live DISCO homepage with a before and after picture.
before picture
final outcome