Background:

The Prepared Mind is a design industry podcast that covers a broad range of topics centric to the graphic arts community such as branding an marketing as well as reporting both controversial and key issues within our industry that need publicity. Overall, I have come to really admire The Prepared Mind podcast and its owner Chris Gee. His service provides a very valuable service to our industry and it's free.

Our industry is one that puts a lot of weight on visual appeal. In this regard, I felt The branding for The Prepared Mind needed some help. A great podcast needs great art to promote it. So to say thanks to Chris and his hard work with this podcast I asked if I could help him revamp his image.

The problem as I saw it with the current mark is that it read more as a clip artist illustration than it did an iconic mark. In addition, I felt the mainly grey colors didn't live up to the podcast industry which is perceived as lively and colorful.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I first addressed the basic shape of the monkey's head and its hands. Every part of the monkey's head is created using circular shapes. I did that to keep it simple and to read easily. I paid close attention to the hands and how they related to the shapes of the face so that they wouldn't complicate the image and draw attention to any one area.

Keeping the colors monochromatic for the characters, etc. create a fresh and lively image that better suits the podcast branding, and the art is simple enough now that other applications could be developed such as t-shirts, stickers, etc.

No more monkey business, the new mark is far more versatile and fun.

Alina's Feedback:

While the original monkey design has a certain charm to it, Von does make a point about it not being sufficiently iconographic for the nature of Chris's podcast and the podcast industry as a whole. Bright colors have come to be associated with the iPod, so Von's new design does help to tie that branding to Chris's individual podcast. The bright colors will attract the visitor, and Chris's lively and informative podcast will hold the visitor captive.