When many people think of logo design, they think aesthetics are the prime goal. It makes sense. After all logo design is what gets many designers’ blood pumping. In fact, it’s one of the most common reasons designers cite for getting them interested in design in the first place. But like all other areas of design, the real key to creating a successful and, yes, aesthetically appealing logo capturing a company’s essence and values in a single visual. And that starts with (drumroll) Understanding, a common theme on this site, you’ll find.
To get there, I started with a series of key questions:
What personality did they want their brand to convey?
Did they view themselves as serious, light-hearted, or somewhere in between?
What made them unique in their field?
Were there any strong preferences for or against particular shapes, colors, or styles?
The answers painted a clear picture: HiveHub wanted to communicate confidence, technical expertise, and creativity while maintaining an approachable and slightly light-hearted tone. They also wanted their logo to emphasize their role as a central hub for innovative digital solutions.
The design process
The logo mark
For HiveHub, the name itself sparked immediate inspiration. The hexagonal structure of a beehive felt like an obvious starting point, but I knew I needed to push beyond the cliché. The hex shape was a natural symbol of structure and connectivity, but I wanted to give it a unique twist to reflect their identity.
From the outset, I visualized incorporating the concept of a hub, extending elements from the hexagon to represent the company’s role as a central point of innovation. I sketched three concepts: one highly stylized, one slightly abstract, and one straightforward. To my surprise, they opted for the simplest design. In hindsight, their choice perfectly aligned with their brand’s straightforward confidence.
Color choice
The color palette was an easy decision. A honey-inspired golden hue was essential to maintain the integrity of the hive metaphor while still feeling modern and professional. While this choice carried a slight risk of being overly literal, it was the best way to ensure the logo’s meaning was immediately clear.
Colors have distinct connotations across industries, and subtle shifts could easily change the logo’s interpretation:
Blue: Healthcare or technology
Gray: Networking or infrastructure
Green: Environmental or chemical themes
Pink: Toys or playful branding
While those colors might work for other industries, the golden hue worked perfectly to convey HiveHub’s balance of sophistication and warmth.
Typography experimentation
Typography is often the unsung hero of logo design. For HiveHub, I initially experimented with integrating hexagonal shapes into the text itself. For example, I tried mirroring the “V” in “Hive” to create a hexagonal element. None of these attempts felt cohesive or balanced.
Eventually, I landed on the clean and versatile Brother 1816, tweaking the letter spacing to harmonize with the logo mark. After several iterations, I subtly adjusted the width of the “V” to balance the design visually. The result was clean, modern, and complementary to the logo mark.
The finished logo
The final HiveHub logo came together with remarkable clarity. The directness of its design reflects the company’s mission: a central hub for creativity, collaboration, and innovation in game and app development.
What this project taught me
Every design project is an opportunity to learn. Even after as many corporate identities as I had created, the HiveHub branding project again reinforced the importance of listening to clients and staying open to their input, even when it challenges your initial vision. While I originally envisioned a more complex design, the simplicity of the final logo proved that sometimes less is more when it comes to corporate identity.
HiveHub’s logo exemplifies how design can be a strategic tool, not just an aesthetic exercise. By aligning visuals with a brand’s goals and values, designers can create something that resonates with both clients and audiences alike.
Trust me with your brand
Whether you’re building a new company from the ground up or refreshing your current identity, I bring the same level of care and consideration to every project. HiveHub’s journey is just one example of how thoughtful design can transform ideas into impactful visual identities.
With nearly 100 corporate identity projects under my belt, I’ve helped shape the branding of startups, established companies, enterprise-level organizations, and even game studios. From healthcare providers and SaaS platforms to creative agencies and video game developers, I have built brands that resonate with their audiences and stand the test of time. Whether creating a logo for a new company, evolving an outdated design, or scaling a corporate identity across digital, print, and interactive platforms, I bring years of experience and an eye for detail to ensure that your brand not only meets its goals but exceeds them.
Corporate identity is more than a logo. It’s your company’s personality. It’s the first impression you leave on clients, partners, investors, and users—a handshake that should inspire confidence and trust. My mission is to craft corporate identities that reflect your vision, resonate with your audience, and stand out in a crowded market.
What is corporate identity?
Your organization’s first impression
Corporate identity is the visual and emotional embodiment of your brand’s essence. It’s how you communicate your organization’s story and values at a glance. A strong corporate identity is cohesive, professional, and impactful—leaving a lasting impression on your audience. On the other hand, an outdated, inconsistent, or amateurish identity can undermine even the best products and services.
I work to ensure your branding reflects not just where your company is today but where you want it to be in five, ten, or fifteen years. Whether you’re a startup looking to punch above your weight or an established company seeking to refresh its image, your brand should communicate your message cleanly, clearly, and confidently.
My approach isn’t about imposing a personal design style; it’s about uncovering your company’s unique personality and expressing it in a way that resonates with your target audience. Whether the aim is to appear like a Fortune 500 company or a personable small business, I tailor every element of the design to fit your vision.
Corporate identity examples
Logo & Stationery
IP Secure
Logo & Website
Prime Bodywork & Massage
Mailer
Half Moon Power Yoga
Trade show booth, print collateral, infographics
updox
Your organization's lasting impression
Defending the brand
Once your corporate identity is created, consistency is key to maintaining its impact. Whether it’s a logo, business card, website, or digital ad, every application of your brand must adhere to the same standards to preserve its integrity.
I not only create corporate identities but also ensure they are applied correctly across all touchpoints. This includes developing corporate identity guidelines that define logo usage, color schemes, typography, and more. These guidelines act as a playbook for internal and external collaborators, ensuring your brand looks cohesive and professional no matter where it appears.
From ensuring your logo appears correctly in a magazine ad to overseeing the production of promotional materials, I act as an advocate for your brand, protecting it from inconsistencies and ensuring it always shines.
Your organization's evolving brand
While consistency is essential, your brand must also grow with your organization. Over time, markets shift, audiences evolve, and companies expand into new industries. A skilled designer understands how to adapt a corporate identity to reflect these changes without losing the core essence of the brand.
Whether it’s refreshing an aging logo, adding new design elements for digital platforms, or scaling the brand for a broader audience, I approach every update with care. Gradual, strategic adjustments ensure your brand evolves seamlessly, maintaining its professionalism and impact.
Tailoring corporate identity to your needs
Branding packages
Corporate identity encompasses a diverse range of products and services, making it challenging for many clients to clearly define and communicate their branding needs to a designer—whether they require a single element or a comprehensive suite of solutions. I’ve found that these are the common groupings.
Logo OnlyFor startups or individuals on a tight budget, a logo can serve as the foundation of their brand. While simple, it’s a powerful first step.
Basic Includes a logo, business cards, letterhead, and other essentials. Often, additional elements like presentation templates or notepads are added based on the client’s needs.
Marketing Package A comprehensive set of materials that includes marketing-focused assets like sales sheets, white papers, ads, and infographics. These are designed to reflect the brand’s identity across both print and digital platforms.
Special Projects From trade show displays to vehicle wraps, these one-off projects require seamless integration with the existing brand.
Branding stages
Many clients find it beneficial to start with a basic corporate identity and add new elements as their needs evolve. This approach ensures that each piece is created with purpose, avoiding wasted effort on assets that may never be used. It also allows the brand to grow naturally, adapting to new opportunities and challenges.
Let's build your brand!
Your corporate identity is the cornerstone of your organization’s success. Whether you’re starting from scratch, refreshing an outdated brand, or scaling an existing identity, I bring the expertise, creativity, and dedication to make your vision a reality.
Your corporate logo is your company’s first impression to prospective clients and customers. First impressions are hard to overcome, and most of the time you won’t be there to try.
It is crucial that a seasoned pro with tons of branding experience leads you through the process. And that’s where I come in.
With more than 60 companies of all sizes branded and rebranded from the corporate logo design to everything that comes afterwards, you can trust that I know the pitfalls and opportunities presented in this very important time in a company’s evolution.
Contents
EVALUATING YOUR CURRENT CORPORATE LOGO
The first step is to detach as much as possible from any personal feelings or other connections you may have with your current corporate logo design, to look at it with new eyes, to look at it as much as possible like your clients and customers will be looking at it. If you’re unable to, try to ask a handful of strangers, people who don’t know you or the company, what their impressions are of the company that this logo represetnts.
Don’t lead them. Ask them things like, “How big do you think this company is?” “How long do you think this company has been in business?” “Is this a foreign or a domestic company?” “What business do you think this company is in?” and “Is this company still in business?” Some or all of their answers might shock you. Just try to go in expecting the worst, because most company logos can use improvement. You’re not alone.
Not all of the logos below in my design portfolio tell specifically what each business does, but all of them tell a client or customer that there is a certain level of sophistication. They all impart a clear mood or tone of the company’s business. They all indicate that the companies are probably current, not decades old. And they all communicate a certain proficiency and confidence in what they do.
So now you’ve either seen it or seen it through strangers’ eyes and you understand it’s time for a change. But how can you transition your company into the next phase without that logo that’s meant so much to you?
Maybe you scratched it out on a napkin during a special, inspired moment when you were first starting out. Maybe your favorite niece was an artists and you were proud to let her create it. Maybe initially you didn’t have any money to do it right. Whatever the reason, you owe it to yourself to hold that old logo in your memory, but to move on. You, your employees, and your company’s success depends on it more than you can imagine.
YOUR CORPORATE LOGO’S REACH
In addition to being your company’s first impression, your corporate logo design has a wider reach than you might imagine.
Every design decision you will every make for your company, must relate in some way to the corporate logo, from the color of your trade show booth, to the orientation of your logo on vertical banners, how small it can appear at low resolution. It informs what your business cards look like, your sales sheets, your brick and mortar signage, your website, your app, your company vehicles, and a never-ending continuing list.
Additionally, your new corporate logo has the power to create whatever image in your clients’ or customers’ minds. If you’re a 10-person shop, an improved corporate logo can suggest that you could be a 100-person operation. What I try to do when creating a corporate logo is identify what the perfect business in your area of expertise would look like, what tone they would set, what reaction they are trying to elicit, and work from there.
Now Is Always time to evaluate your CORPORATE LOGO
So again, decouple your emotions from your current corporate logo. I’ll help you right your ship, using the wisdom and guidance I’ve gained over my years as a a professional designer who has done this hugely important work successfully dozens of times before.
Simply put, white space is an empty area surrounding a design element. And don’t be mislead by “white” and “empty” because the design element isn’t always surrounded by a field of pristine white, but possibly a texture like grass or sky or some other regular background. But the effect is that in relation to the featured design element, the area around it is empty. “White space” is simply a convenient term.
Why Is White Space a “Beautiful Thing”?
Now you know WHAT it is, WHY is it? And what makes it a “beautiful thing”? To understand why designers have relied on white space since the beginning of Design, one must understand its effect on a viewer.
Because we’re basically animals, when any of us with normal, healthy vision looks at a designed piece, they generally see elements in a predictable order:
Faces
Color
Symbols
Edges
Text
You can imaging how difficult things could get for a designer if this order were set in stone. Fortunately, we have work-arounds and among the most powerful of them is white space.
There’s one thing I left off the list above because it’s not really a thing, but the phenomenon of comparison. You see, more than any specific type of element, humans pick on differences more strongly than about anything else. Our eye shoots right to the piece of spinach between the boss’s teeth. We can’t NOT see the one out-of-step solider. We notice the child among adults at the business meeting. And it seems there is no turning off command of our focus.
And that’s where the magic of white space finally comes into play. If you need the text to be seen before or more prominently than, say, the model who is speaking, leverage white space in two directions:
Framing. By placing the element of focus—the text, in this case—in a semi-central location in the design and by giving it a lot of room on all sides, we see it as special or important.
Diminishing. Conversely, by removing white space from around a design elements that might otherwise steal attention, we communicate to a viewer that the element is less consequential.
Of course there are better and worse ways to utilize the concept of white space but at its root, it really is that simple.
A blunt but successful example of using white space is how we always see “Got Milk” campaign or the Nike swoosh presented, by themselves and with ample space around them. But an experienced designer will consider white space in every aspect of design. The spacing between headlines and paragraphs, the tightness of lines in the title of a book, or how much space there is between elements of a business card are all examples of how white space is a conscious decision a seasoned professional makes at every point of design.
It is often the single most notable difference between design work that a viewer will subconsciously categorize as “pro” versus “amateur”.
In this digital world, one might expect printed anything to be passé at best, if not outright obsolete. But printed stationery design is still a not only a thing: it’s a necessity. Digital stationery isn’t a replacement but an addition to an individual’s or a company’s list of corporate identity needs. I have branded and rebranded 50+ large and small organizations nationwide, including full print and digital stationery.
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