OUGD 503 - Emma's Cakes

For this brief, I was asked by a friend of the family to create a logo for her cake making business. She is only a small business who works from home and so needs something that is fun and suitable to be used across a few printed outcomes. I chose this brief as I felt it would allow me to have a bit of fun and do something different to my usual work. My initial thoughts are to use colours and shapes to create the logo, representing the various things that come on cakes such as sprinkles etc.

I then thought maybe I could somehow incorporate this idea into lettering. As she is called Emma, and her business is simply 'Emma's', I decided to try making an E.

As this didn't really work aesthetically, I decided to try a simple shape instead. However these also don't look very appealing or that interesting.

I then thought back to the idea of creating something to do with lettering, as well as the idea of a cake. From this thought, I had the idea to create a simple cake shape that also resembles an e. I started with a rough drawing before gradually refining it:

However, this doesn't really look very professional or well made. It looks very cheap and clip-art like. I decided to continue thinking about ideas. I thought about creating something based around a cake that has been cut, revealing this sort of shape:

As I made this shape smaller, I started to realise that it has become in the shape of an uppercase 'E'. I liked this and thought maybe I could get something out of it. I started to develop it and gradually altered it and changed it, as seen below:

I didn't like the colours and decided to see which combination of colours worked best:

After having created various different outcomes that all differ slightly, including black and white version, I decided that I really don't like this idea any more. I feel that it wouldn't work very well and the 'E' is too subtle to be noticed. After having struggled with imagery now for some time, I thought about typography again.

I realised that more hand-rendered type would work better, as shown below (very rough):

I really like this idea, based around old American diner typography to represent the retro and almost vintage style cakes she makes, and want to refine it. I began trying to write it digitally but didn't get anywhere:

I then realised that the only way to get this right would be to draw it by hand and scan it. So I did, and placed circles over areas that I wanted to be round. I then drew over it on Illustrator and got this:

I really like this outcome and thought it was much more refined and representative of her. I then just tweaked little parts of it that I felt needed altering:

I was then left with this, which is my final outcome: