Life Soup

I started by sketching in my notebook, and I particularly liked the idea of incorporating the shape of a soup bowl. After some consideration, I wanted to present the words in the shape of a soup bowl, and I particularly liked the idea of "Life" being the contents and "Soup" being the container.

After a year of working under the alias "Protista", I decided that I wasn't really happy with it. As a name it had the dual problem of looking generic on a lineup poster, but also appearing ambiguous and confusing to pronounce.

After some heavy brainstorming, I decided to settle on a name that I'd considered for a while: Life Soup. This seemed to be a much better name as it was unique, easy-to-pronounce, and catchy. It also held a double meaning for me: firstly it juxtaposed a big, wide and deep concept (Life) with the everyday and the simple (Soup), which felt pretty real to me. Secondly I'm a bit of a nerd and "life soup" alludes to a theory of the origins of life, which suggests that we evolved from chemical reactions in a primordial soup, billions of years ago.

Re-brand

Life Soup

Sketches

I re-sketched the design, within a faint soup bowl outline, before tracing it in pen on tracing paper, which I then scanned in and vectorised in illustrator. I experimented with a white logo and black outline, before settling on a solid logo on a pastel yellow background.

First draft

Ultimately I was happy with the 'organic' look of the result, which gave the sense that the logo was grown, not made, while still retaining the clear soup-bowl symbolism.

However, after a few nights sleeping on my first draft, I wasn't happy with the proportions, so I got out my notebook again and an actual soup bowl, to sketch and analyse the correct proportions from my intended perspective, as well as the kinds of curves.

After working this out, I used tracing paper to pencil out the rough shape and placement of letters and when I was happy, traced the neater tracing again in pen, folding over the sheet to do so, so that it would scan more clearly.

I then vectorized the scan in illustrator, smoothened some lines and made some final adjustments, before settling on a solid black logo, changing the background to a pastel green (invoking the colour of "life").

Analysis

Letters

Logo

Organic