STUDIO 129
Studio 129 is the home of Glenn County Office of Education’s (GCOE) audio recording studio and Recording Arts Program. My client was an old friend that helped design and build the studio: Brian Berry - Assistant Engineer/Studio Technician. He came to me to help them come up with a new identity separate from the GCOE’s. My first concept was based on some sketches Brian had done as well as some historical imagery of the Orland Arch. This arch is on the North side of Orland as you enter the town on Old Highway 99.
Highways & FRWY's
While the arch didn’t work, Brian liked the idea of using the old shield road sign shape. We could reference the local history of Old Highway 99 and I-5, and the overt idea of a “road to audio.” I just now made that up.
Flavors
Based on the visual research, I came up with several shield shapes to make sure the studio had maximum logo flexibility: Solid with outline, Solid with inner outline and solid. Plus there were two text lockups and one small outline shield.
Wait, hold on!
We were on track and moving forward with the shield, even though the Director of the program still wasn’t fully on board. As fate would have it, Brian had some guitar picks made with the vertical text lockup on them. He sent me a picture showing me how great they looked.
Lightbulbs, and some fainting. Me: Hey we should use that as the shape for the logo instead of the shield. It has the musical reference and clearly the logotype fits right in there!
Pickin'
Luckily the logotype lockups worked great and I quickly came up with a series of pick shaped concepts. It pretty much made itself.
