Building the Swift and Cuckoo Brand

I really enjoy developing new brands, and wanted to share my journey of how I created the Swift and Cuckoo Brand.

The brand name was chosen to symbolise a fast service, that is creative and fun. The name was chosen to describe the overall service as opposed to the types of individual design services it offers, so that it gives the brand freedom to change and move with technology advancements.

The logo was heavily developed over a long time period and many different ideas were tried out…

In the end I decided to go with a typography based logo with a gradient colour fill. The gradient represents change and movement, which relates to the interactive element of the brand’s services.  

        

The typography pairing used are Aphrodite Slim Text, and Futura Std Heavy. Aphrodite was chosen for its femininity, and it’s expressive ligatures which suggests fun, expression and movement. Futura was chosen as a good contrasting font. It is a solid and strong sans-serif font, which is clean and frill-less in design. This font represents the reliability and strength of the company.

        

On occasions where the logo will be too small to use, e.g. as a favicon, a symbol has been created to use in those instances. The symbol shows two outspread wings representing the swift and cuckoo, placed together in a circular shape. The symbol will not be used alongside the main typographic logo, it is to be used as a substitute.

                              

The brand colours are a blue-green gradient comprising of #4386ab and #60bb9d. The colours were chosen because blue represents depth, stability and trust, and green represents freshness.

I created a moodboard to help develop ideas on the brand image. I wanted to stay with the theme of fun and use bright pastel colours that worked with the logo.

It is important that my brand image looks uniform throughout all platforms, on both printed materials and online.

The website incorporates fun and quirkiness within the images and voice of the language used. Subtle interactions have been included throughout the site, such as button links, and hover and scrolling transitions and animations, which all help to create a positive user experience.