I'm always super stoked when a logo project lands in my lap. Dreaming up the identity for a cool brand is every design nerd's dream project. Just give me a blank sketchbook and a few hours and I'll easily sum up the entire essence of your brand in one clever, inevitable icon of Nike swooshiness-caliber! Wrong. A day or two into the process we designers quickly remember that as usual, we're in for bumpy ride. A rush job (like pretty much every design job— let's be serious), the Spree logo came at us fast and we took it on head first. Today, we are proud to present our fresh-out-of-the-oven brand identity for Spree Commerce, finished just in time for the launch of their new website.

For those of you who don't already know, Spree is the cutting-edge, powerful, and flexible open-source e-commerce framework for Ruby on Rails developers. It's got everything:  inventory management,  checkout functionality, reporting. It's basically the shiz for anyone who wants to launch a bad-ass online store. Got it?

So, we wanted Spree's new logo to embody all of it's unique characteristics as a brand: powerful, bold, flexible, simple, and smart. With that in mind, we came up with a logo comprised of basic iconic shapes:  arrow, cart, smile; and we feel it efficiently communicates what Spree does. By distilling down the concept of a “transaction” into a simple mark, we've designed a logo that actually tells the brand story—without words. As for the intrinsic look and feel, the arrow portrays a sense of action and movement which keeps these basic shapes from feeling static or flat, and the rounded shapes help give it a friendly, human touch. It took us a few weeks of sketching, designing, resketching, debating, and redesigning to get the Spree logo where we wanted; but we're finally really happy with our solution. Now have a look at a few of the ideas that didn't make the cut. (Flaming Cart Sketch: there will always be a special place in my heart for you.)

Jenna Holcombe - Dynamo's Senior Designer. Jenna is currently misplacing her glasses, laughing at Corey's jokes, making you an okay espresso, and massaging your retinas with her Wacom pen.