Anyone who’s been paying attention will have noticed that Author Help has been undergoing a few changes lately — we’ve taken on a new staff member, we’ve re-built our main publishing package, and we’ve reorganised some of our services on our website. We decided that we should have a new logo to go with it all.
The new logo needed to be easily recognisable as us and show what we do. It also needed to look smart, professional and approachable – just as we hope our services are.
We got in touch with graphic designer Henry Hyde, who we often commission for book covers, and started what turned out to be a far more involved process than we’d expected. We talked about what we wanted it to say, what subtext we’d like people to take from it, what impression we wanted to give, and so on. Henry came of up with a whole range of ideas. After a process of elimination, refinement, getting feedback from friends, and several more rounds of pinning down exactly what we wanted, we finally settled on something we think works.
It features our name, because what we’re called is what we do. It also features a row of icon-style graphics depicting a word processor document, an arrow, and a book. We like to think the symbology is quite obvious there. We chose the particular shade of blue because it’s a good strong colour and the slight suggestion of purple made it seem a bit more warm and friendly than most cold blues.
It may not be packed with obscure meaning and multiple layers of pretence, but neither are we. We help authors, and that’s what our logo says.
