How a logo almost became a branding “boob”-boo
I didn’t want to overthink it
This is how every great story starts. I really just wanted something simple. I’ve just organized my activities all under one “brand” so people don’t have to keep up with me in multiple places.
I decided to lean into my nickname as my brand. What’s my nickname?
Brittany Monkey Baby
Where does that come from?
A coworker gave me this nickname after this commercial came out during the super bowl. This commercial was all the rage, and one of my coworkers randomly started calling me Brittany Monkey Baby (BMB for short), and it just stuck, so here we are.
So sure, I’ve got the domain name/brand name and now I just need a logo. You know, just something simple. So I call over my best designer friend Chris Kendrick and as per usual, I give him few details and no vision and ask for something fun (pro tip: designers LOVE WHEN YOU DO THIS).
First iteration
He starts off with “okay I like it with the glasses, but I feel like it looks like ‘boob’.”
And … now you can’t unsee that can you?
Yep, neither could we.
Refinement
I wonder if it’s just me… but nope, I show four other people the logo and without any priming, their first thought is “it looks like it spells boob”.
Don’t get me wrong… my “brand” is pretty laid back. I don’t need to be all prim and propper. But straight-up spelling boob is probably not quite what I’m going for.
But I liked the overall concept of bmb with the “m” being a monkey’s face. So we continued on with a bit more refinement.
Chris tried square glasses.
Better. But still “boob”.
Tried working in some more glasses, and also adjusted the color scheme.
I liked the color scheme, and i liked the monkey’s head was making a “m” but it still didn’t feel right. I was like “maybe we should put a computer in the glasses or something?” but that just couldn’t work without looking weird or too busy.
Moving the face up
So then we tried moving the monkey’s head up and filling in the glasses
We also tried changing up the fonts. With the more rounded B’s I thought this looked more like Beats by Dre 😂. But I do like the monkey’s head coming up. You can sorta make out the “m” still but you also realize it’s a monkey and you are starting to not think of the glasses as boobs anymore.
I’m like… what if we add a mouth? After all… I do like to talk haha.
Now we’re getting there
And now I think we’ve finally landed on something here.
🎉 This is what I’m calling a success for now. But who knows. By the time you are reading this post, it might even have iterated and become something different.
My life actually is a lot like this logo
Sometimes I know where I’m going with something. And sometimes I don’t. But I just take a step forward in the direction I know, and iterate from there until I get to something that feels right.
And that’s the purpose of my blog here. To show you all my imperfections and how I just try some stuff and see what works. Some of it works. A lot of it doesn’t. And I just iterate as I go and enjoy the journey.
Hope you enjoy the ride with me and learn as we go!
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Brittany Joiner 