Voluntopia: Part Two

Logo Design and Illustrations

Voluntopia is an app for people that want to volunteer. For the full story on it, please see the first case study.

The Logo design wasn’t a requirement. I could have just used a typeface and called it a day, but where is the fun in that? Over a two day period, while working on the moodboards, I sketched out a number of logo options. Some word-marks, some individual letters, some iconic forms, and things that bordered on being illustrations. It wasn’t until I started to use some of the pieces in the style tiles that the logo, and eventually the illustrations, started to take shape.

The Third round of sketches started with me wanting to mimic the paper cutout illustrations that I liked from the moodboards. I didn’t want to actually use someone else’s art. I got out an X-acto knife, a pencil, a ruler, and started to cut out some buildings out of paper. The original paper illustrations where done by Eiko Ojala. If you have the time, look him up, his work is just incredible. I can’t imagine how much time he puts into just one piece.

Once I had these shapes, I put them against a black background and just took photos with my phone. I wasn’t worried that they where not square. I wanted those imperfections. While I would not keep all of them, I did like them. Once I had them photographed, I brought them into Photoshop. Photoshop, the great equalizer! I started to layer the images, reshaping some of the buildings that I thought were a little off kilter. Then it was just a question of making a city out of the separate images. Cleaning them up, adding some shadows, and altering the colors a bit. I also added in some trees and clouds utilizing Adobe Illustrator. Then it was just a question of making it work, and tinkering with it until was perfect.

Sketch one. The colors of the buildings are basically the colors of the paper, with some brightness and contrast bumped up. I didn’t want the city to be super colorful. The colors come by way of the manipulated contrasts of the buildings, the green of the trees, the red cross that’s on the hospital, and the clouds. The texture of the background, which would be used in the app in other areas, was just a Photoshop filter with a slight gradation. With the use of some drop shadows on the elements, depth and dimension was added, giving it a 3D feel, but still flat appearance. This took me back to the paper craft that I liked from the moodboards. I liked the details of the water towers, the trees, and the little houses. I would eventually give them a greater part to play by creating some microinteractions with them.

Sketch two. Type was added along with a tagline. I added a blimp. The clouds became a bit translucent. Some of the buildings were moved to create better shapes and shadows. The tagline wasn’t in the material I was given, but it worked, and it also tested well with the users.

The final photoshop version, showed the buildings spaced out some, and the clouds interacting with the type. The clouds moved a bit to make the type stand out. One of the users said she couldn’t read the word with the cloud on it, so I tinkered with it some. For the final version the blimp came off, but I wasn’t abandoning the Voluntopia blimp-force. I was going to add it in as a microinteraction, so I need to move it to its own layer. I beefed it up some, giving it some color so it wouldn’t be lost. I thought of it as a floating watermelon balloon. I started to rework the logo for one color use, but abandoned the work because time was running short. If a need comes for it, I can revisit it. I eventually rebuilt it in color in Illustrator, so I had vector art to help with the Principle animations.

Some of the other sketches, illustrations, and pieces of art, that made it into the final app.