Let the creative juices flow.

Benn Stevens is an intern with Aleuromedia.  Live Free or Die Laughing is a New Hampshire based comedy troupe with a conscience, Mike Koutrobis is a long time personal friend all round  great guy.

Logo Project (authored by Benn Stevens)

Live Free or Die Laughing Logo Redesign.
When this opportunity first presented itself to me I thought, “awesome, a chance to do a logo design would be amazing,” and it was, BUT … I wasn’t prepared for how challenging it would actually be.

At the beginning of this project when I saw the original logo for Live Free or Die Laughing I thought that it was a clever logo, simple but not really attention getting.  I believed that I could create a better one.

It was much harder than I had anticipated.

My project requirements were pretty simple I thought:

• create a logo that is easy to see
• create a logo that is recognizable
• keep with the New Hampshire theme
• keep the existing size and shape
• keep the existing text

I had some basic idea but those initial thoughts ended up setting my mind on one track and didn’t allow me to see other good ideas.  I got stuck.  I ended up going to friends for their thoughts, but they were a little less than helpful.  In the end I came up with a few logo ideas (see “OMG I did that? 1-5″) that were way too simple, bland and worse than the original LFDL logo.

These logos efforts were nothing to be proud of, and I needed something to focus on that would get me unstuck.

After a conversation with Kelley-Sue about reacquainting myself with the brand I was trying to represent visually.  We talked about different ways we might actually die laughing in New Hamshire.

Once I had the juices flowing again and was able to come up with ideas that were more detailed, interesting and even entertaining. This second set of logos that I created were incredibly fun to play which made the project less like work overall.  But I was still not there yet…

These logos, while fun, might lend someone to believe that laughter is found at the bottom of a bottle, and that is definitely not at all the message I was trying to deliver.  So I went back it but with a much better attitude.

My first shot at this project, in all honesty, was something that I am not proud of, but something that I’m glad happened. It allowed me to break down the walls that I had built around myself and work in a more freeing atmosphere, hence the somewhat wild logos in the second batch. All in all, the spark of an idea, a kick in the pants, and a creative process is what really got me going on this project (and that conversation with Kelley-Sue is going to stay with me for a long time). “Sometime you need to get out of your own way. Let the creative juices flow.”

These are my final concepts.  Hope you like them.