All Dog Adventures

This past week I took on a conceptual project at work that I really enjoyed working on. It was to create a logo for a school that trains dogs for agility competitions. I was especially happy because the client gave me full creative freedom in coming up with a concept. I was toying around with typfaces and I happened upon one of my personal favorites, Cooper Black. I stayed on the typeface for a minute when I noticed the little nub on the lowercase "g" which reminded me of a short tail. I begin to look at the word "dog" in lowercase and I started seeing the animal's shape. The lowercase "d" has an ear flopping over on the ascender and the lowercase "o" works perfectly as a body. A little but of work later I had this:

No changes have been made to the existing forms of the typeface, I only added the elements of the wagging tail and nose. I believe that the word with the added elements visually creates the image of a dog without changing the integrity of the typeface.

So now I had a starting point, I began to work with different type arrangements with "all" and "adventures" but nothing seemed to work. I was afraid that I'd have to ditch the "dog" icon, for something that would work with the other words in the company name but then I happened to come across a photo of a dog running up an "A" shaped ramp and then the answer came to me. I drew a triangle shape and began to play. After reworking the the shape and type arrangement over and over I finally nailed it with this one:

The triangle, as I mentioned above, is representative of the "A" shaped ramps that dogs run up and down during agility competitions. The descender of the "g" goes over the top of the triangle as though the dog is running over the ramp. I think that this arrangement of the typography was the most pleasing and interesting. One major comment I got from my peers was to have "adventures" running down the other side of the triangle but that looked to predictable and also disjointed. I like the negative space. In the end I am very satisfied with the logo, I think it speaks perfectly for the company it belongs to and I'm happy to add this into my portfolio.

Thanks to all who offered their helpful criticism during the process!