[Over the 30+ years I've worked professionally as a designer, interesting side stories have come up about my identity designs. This is one of an ongoing series of "Logodotes" - anecdotes about my logo designs.]
In 1980, my first year out of college, ad agency owner Al Bauer asked me to design a logo to identify his firm. Bauer had been toying with the idea of using an abstract image to represent the company. In fact, he'd even considered making use of an abstract painting created by his daughter, artist Marlene Bauer. The pre-digital printing expense of reproducing a four-color image led to the client quickly changing his mind about the possibility.
The initial concept (above left) evolved out of my interest in the minimalist logo imagery I studied in school during the 1970's. Many logos of the time were simple, somewhat heavy, and involved geometric forms. The client almost immediately selected this particular design. I was told that he appreciated its abstract representation of how advertising was often a very orderly discipline - until something went completely out of whack.
A couple of weeks later an excited Bauer called me, having just realized the design was in actuality very abstract lower-case a and b letterforms (visually defined above right).
© 2010 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives
