As I was working on the template documentation, I realized that I had to actually work on some kind of logo / identify system too. I spent some time at Starbucks sketching out the concept that I had in mind: a column that looks like a tree. The idea of Agenceum is, as it says at the top of this page, “Agency + Lyceum”. A lyceum is a public hall or school, named after Aristotle’s original place of discourse in ancient Athens, so I thought making a column would be a good place to start. The tree aspect references the nurturing nature of Agenceum, and to some respect you can also think of it as a tree of knowledge. Plus, I thought it just might look cool.

You can see in the sketches that I’m trying to make a simplified column out of tree-like elements. The logo should be fairly square, so it works well in a variety of placements. There’s a little bit of perspective implied through use of scale differences.

After sketching for about five minutes, I spent another 2.5 hours drawing and refining shapes in Adobe Illustrator CS4.

Although I’m pretty happy with the progression from the simple sketch to the more finished version, I’m not quite satisfied. The open space in the middle of Draft 03 bugs me because it seems empty and unresolved. Adding leaves, to reference the “tree” idea, may save it. Or I could make the logo more creepy by putting something mysterious like an All Seeing Eye for that “Masonic” vibe. Worst case, I just draw an actual Ionic column top, and be done with it. However, the resulting logo would be pretty literal and not very witty, so I’m going to think on this some more.

The typeface, incidentally, is a placeholder. I want a font something like this, but a little more vintage in feel, like the block style used in the late 1800s. The placeholder font is Arial Rounded, if you’re curious. It just needs a little more presence and interestingness.