It’s Soccer season. At least in Germany where the FIFA Women’s World cup is taking place. So I thought about something related to Soccer.  A logo for a local league that I created sometime ago, and use that as an opportunity to share with you the creative process.

A little over 3 years ago, I was asked if I would be interested in developing a logo for the local (Silicon Valley) French youth soccer team : Factor 11 / Les petits bleus. I thought it would be fun (and it was). Many of you in the bay area are familiar with the logo now. This article is about the creative process in building the logo and the various stages in getting to where it is today.

Who is Factor 11 / Les Petits Bleus

You can go to their website <http://www.factor-eleven.org/> for the full story, but here is my very condensed version :

On a hot day of Summer 2007, Eleven Hi-Tech professionals got together and started discussing passionately about something: it wasn’t a hi-tech gear, it wasn’t the latest trend, it wasn’t the coolest gadget. It was Soccer.

What got them together is their passion to this sport and their determination to taking it to the next level. They saw talent in the youngsters they were training (This is “Les Petits Bleus” soccer team). And they were starting to put together many Factor Eleven products such as Summer Camps, Spring Boot Camp, special competitions, etc…

First Brainstorming session

I dealt primarily with 4 of the Factor Eleven founders, the Marketing committee. 4 very highly skilled professionals in their field with lots of ideas on how their logo should look like. So the outcome of the first brainstorming session was typical : tons of ideas floating around left and right with no clear consensus, but with an open mind to new ideas and to explore something new…

This was enough for me to get a perception of the various individuals, their personalities, their passion, and to a certain extend what they were looking for.

Second Brainstorming session

In preparation for the following brainstorming sessions (we did a few online chats using some collaborative tools from Google), I sketched a bunch of logos with many different styles and solicited their feedback. I usually don’t do that unless I am working with a creative director or a Design professional with whom I have worked before. But in this case, I felt I could control the situation and not let it spin indefinitely. I explained to the team that I was in an ‘exploration mode’ before converging onto something.

Here is a selection of the draft logos that I sent to the team. As you can see they range from the traditional and déjà-vu to the wild and crazy, from a logotype to a tag. I listened carefully to the team comments and reactions, what they like but also what they didn’t like and within a few weeks, I had a pretty good idea of what would work.

We did one more Face to Face meeting where I explained to the team my conclusion and my recommendation : build a monogram for Factor 11 that could serve as a foundation for the logo. They all agreed and I was now ready to roll up my sleeves and dive into this project.

The Monogram profile:

After converging to the monogram concept for the logo, here are the fundamentals behind this idea:

– A monogram that is easy to recognize and enable us to build brandware.

– Possibly easy to remember and (to a certain extent) easy to reproduce (hand drawn)

– Something that is kids friendly (please define) but not too child like

– Something that has the power, the spirit and the sport of Factor 11

– Something compact in shape (as in a circle or a square) and not too extended

– Ideally something that is recognizable even if tilted or flipped over (since it might be placed on a ball or a moving sport apparel)

– And let’s not forget something modern

With all that in mind, I was ready to go.

Xirod was my starting point

Not that I a big fan of this typeface, but Xirod has some of the graphical elements we are looking for: Bold and simple geometric shapes (that means easy to remember and duplicate). Legibility might be a slight issue for small kids, but I like the “F” shape in this font. “F” as in Factor 11.

Just in case you are curious, Xirod is a true type font released in 2004 by Ray Larabie. It is a freeware but the Trademark is owned by Larabie.

F is the focal point

My original concept was to concentrate on the F and create a shape by rotating it a couple of times. The idea was to create something that is spinning (energy) and also something “self revolving”, meaning it is exactly the same shape every time you rotate it 120 degrees.

What I liked:

– The overall round shape

– The sort of “escutcheon” shape revealed in the middle (although we are not sure this is a good thing to have at the end)

What I didn’t like:

– The extended arms of the F , resulting in 2 undesired effects:

o A swastika style / effect

o A low energy feeling (even though the F is spinning, the long arms give it a sense of heavy inertia, a slow moving fat object)

Giving it another spin

Here is what I did in trying to fix what I didn’t like.

1- I took the whole object and rotated it slightly counter clockwise so that the escutcheon is straight pointing downwards (notice that this move does not alter the self –revolving feature of the object)

2- I truncated pieces of the F by :

a. Shortening the upper arm and giving a slight angular shape

b.Removing from the lower arm the part that is protruding beyond the neighboring F.

Better but still not happy with it. 2 things were bothering me:

– The F now is unbalanced (upper arm too long compared to the lower one

– The whole thing was starting to look like a nuclear icon or symbol (not exactly where we want to go)

A 3D Cube?

On the positive side, I noticed that the escutcheon can be read entirely differently: by adding 3 lines from the center, it becomes a 3D cube, something to explore (may be).

More Energy?

Also, by creating this cube, another aspect of the rotating F is revealed: you can see more energy, and may be a stylized silhouette of running legs created by the 2 upper arms of the lower Fs. I added a colored circle in the background to see if this effect can be accentuated:

No real difference. The main issue is that it is an interesting shape but it doesn’t have the “Factor 11” factor:

– Energy / Power? : OK, but may be not exactly the kind of power we are looking for.

– Sports related? : Hardly, the 3D cube doesn’t help here.

– Kids friendly? : Who knows?

Besides, I was stuck with this F because there is no room left for “11”, and having a monogram based on a triple F is may be pushing the envelope too hard.

Getting somewhere

I re-worked the F by trimming it further and added a couple of bars to represent the “11” (notice that I did not use the Xirod 1 mainly for lack of real estate but also because the shape would be competing with the F).

And here we go; now we are getting somewhere. Things started to look much better:

The overall shape seems more balanced and more friendly. I can see kids recognizing and liking this sort of mark. The 11 is not necessarily read as 11 until you are told, but that is an interesting / intriguing aspect. The 11 can also be read as a quotation mark (another interesting effect). However, the 3D cube started to bother me.

With or without?

Difficult to answer, especially when the monogram is not done yet. Moving forward, I will remove the 3D cube from all my next drawing (knowing that it can be put back), but before doing so, I would like to explore its pros and cons.

Pros:

– Preserves the self-revolving feature of the monogram (if cube facets are left blank or filled with a self-revolving artifact)

– Can be filled with different colors to represent a segment or a sub-division of Factor 11 or player levels, awards, etc… (But you do not necessarily need the cube for that).

– Can also be explored to have each of the 3 facets representing Factor 11 core values or tag such as (energy . fun . team), although this will break the self-revolving feature.

– Can be animated (rotating) on the web site to show different “facets” of factor 11.

Cons:

– Difficult to marry 3D with 2D

– Removes the “escutcheon” effect which we may want.

– Distracts the eye (people will look at the cube instead of reading the rotating F11)

If you really want to push it you can imagine having the 3D cube animated on the web site, then fading out and revealing the escutcheon behind it …

Containing it

Back to the monogram, even though I started to like the shape, I felt it needed more work to be “contained”. A surrounding circle is the logical way to go, but how about 2?

Adding Color?

As you noticed, I switched to color, since everything looked OK in black. I also played with the background color.

I can already see a sticker or a stamp on a wearable item!

Adding a Label

Let’s not forget that although we like the monogram to be recognizable, we need to build the brand. That means that we need to add Factor eleven as a label to the monogram each time we can. With time, people will stop reading the label and will know that it’s Factor 11 just by the monogram. Also for practical or design reasons, we might elect not to put the label (but only the monogram) on specific items, such as a soccer ball.

Note that I used Xirod for the labels throughout this study just to be consistent, but that does not preclude us from using another font for the final version.

Adding a label to a round shape can be done in different manners, I decided to go with the obvious one, just by spacing out the 2 circles surrounding the monogram. I put here a couple of text layout options. One is more suitable for reading upside down that the other.

Note that I am not a fan of the 11 in addition to “eleven” in this label. It might be read as FACTOR ELEVEN II. I just put it here as a gap filler and if need be we can use any graphical gizmo instead (a circle, a star, an icon, even a soccer ball (just kidding)).

Bigger Label?

We can also make the label bigger (for greater legibility) and with more space, as below:

You can also envisage more text such as “powered by Factor 11” or “Factor 11” on the upper arch and a tag line such as “Soccer Adrenaline” on the lower arch.

Adding another label

With this design, it is even possible to integrate the label of the sub-brands (such as “les petits bleus”) within the overall logo – as opposed to put it on the side. In this case, we can use the center place as the escutcheon or icon for the sub-brand. Here for example, I put just a simple solid color.

One more variance

I wanted to try one more thing: creating a small divider between the Fs to increase their legibility. The result is pleasing and released the pressure from the entrapped escutcheon, but is slightly less classy than the original (with closed Fs).

What if? A third option

What if we depart from the roundness effect of the F and drew a more angular F? The result is also interesting and is a candidate for consideration.

The Winner

I sent the 3 finalists designs to the team asking them to run some tests (printing them and trying them on various apparels, asking people around them for feedback, …). Then we met , there was a clear winner : Option 1. We also selected a few colors to try and selected the dark blue. Since then, the logo has not changed and has gained some good awareness!