The mermaid looked fantastic! The designer took the description that Lisa provided her and made a beautiful and original work of art as our logo. We made several tweaks to include the design elements that Lisa felt were important. We changed the design of the “clutch” and changed how she was holding it and we changed the tail to make it appear like she was floating. We also made changes to the color of her eyes and lips, but it really looked great!
And then we noticed a very important aspect about the logo. It was a beautiful mermaid with no connection at all to our product! We had forgotten to build in the name of our product, and while the mermaid had all the symbolism we wanted, you really needed to be a student of the product to get it.
We had a series of calls with the graphic designer. The first addition was to add a stylized S and C to either side of her tail, which served two purposes. It established that the logo represented something, and it made the logo squarer, which is important when you consider marketing issues. We experimented with several different locations until we decided on the current design.
We decided that we also needed to have the name “SeaClutch” somewhere on the logo and went through several different versions with the name placed in a variety of different locations. After several iterations, we decided that it should placed below the tail in a stylized script.
After several weeks of trial and error, we finally had a logo we were proud of and felt represented the brand we were trying to build. After we filed for Trademark protection, we added the phrase that you have seen on our promotional materials. That phrase is “Your World, Our Touch, SeaClutch”. We felt that the phrase added more depth to the logo, but it is not part of the original trademark filing. If I feel it is necessary, I’ll go back and amend the trademark in the future.
Some final thoughts about graphic design work. It is very important that you have an artist you can work with! You will need someone who is comfortable with the creative “back and forth” process where a version is developed and then modified through several iterations until you are both happy with the product. You also need someone who understands how to balance your vision with the realities of printing t-shirts, mugs, etc.
Finally, you need someone who can change file formats and make additions as you work through the marketing process. Luckily, we had all that. It was now time to file the trademark!
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