One Logo a Day |

One Logo a Day | Four Stories in a Single Mark

For one month, I challenged myself to design a logo every day. On some days, I set myself a harder rule: the mark shouldn’t just represent something. It should tell a whole story, with a before, an after and a small surprise, using only black shapes on a white surface.

A logo gets about a second of attention, so nothing can be explained. The viewer has to work out what happened, and that moment of working it out is what makes a mark stick.

The window A simple sash window with four panes, drawn with strict right angles. Then one jagged burst breaks into the upper pane. There’s no stone and no culprit, and the street is out of frame. All the geometry around the hole makes the damage feel louder, and you start wondering who ran away.

The tower Battlements, a heavy wall and an arched gate: everything about this shape says “keep out”. But two small dots look out from the darkness of the entrance. With those two dots, the fortress stops being architecture and becomes a character, and you’re left asking who is in there, and whether they’re guarding it or hiding.

The chase A large circle opens its mouth. In front of it, a tiny swimmer with a wavy tail heads the other way as fast as it can. Size does all the work: one huge, calm shape and one small, panicked line. It’s a very old race, told backwards and with a sense of humour.

The abduction A flying saucer tilts above a long, curving beam of light. Cut out of that beam in white, a pitchfork rises into the sky. There’s no farmer in the picture, and that’s the joke. The one object left behind tells you everything that just happened in the field.

What the series taught me Every story here depends on what I left out. Grids keep the forms disciplined, so one irregular detail can carry the whole narrative. It’s the same principle I bring to client work: find the one idea worth telling, then remove everything that stands in its way.