STUDIO MYO

CONTEXT

IDENTITY

Studio Myo is the team I worked with throughout the semester. The name "Myo" came from trying to make a word out of our initials at the time (MYYO, one Y taken out for simplicity). While not the most original idea, we hoped to reverse engineer a meaning from it from which we could base an identity for ourselves.

From there we made the following observations:

"Myo" is a word of Greek origin, used to relate to muscles.
"Myo" can be read similarly to "Neo", which relates to something new.
Adding "Studio" to the front reads as "Studio Myo", which has the same pronunciation as "Studio Mio", meaning "My Studio" in Spanish.

COLOR

We chose blue as our primary color, as it communicated innovation with a safe and reliable undertone.

TEAM CONTRACT

In the meantime, we created a Team Contract with our core values, guidelines, roles and attributes. The core values we chose were:

Innovation, to always strive for something new. This ties into the Myo/Neo similarity.
Quality, to make sure every detail is just right.
Adaptability, because we're willing to change with the client.
Efficiency, to get things done quickly without sacrificing quality.

We also decided that our tone of voice should be direct yet relatable, as we chose to target startups looking to innovate. The directness reflected our desire to innovate, while the relatability relfected the youthfulness in new startups.

PLANNING

We initially made a Trello board to keep track of tasks and their deadlines. A teacher suggested we use Jira instead as it is more common in professional spaces, so we moved our tasks there instead. We would later apply a Scrum-based planning with sprints and check-in's to ensure tasks were organized and completed on time.

WORDMARK PROTOTYPE

INITIAL DESIGN

As we all began making logo design ideas, I created a wordmark logo using Adobe Illustrator. I started out with the plain text "myo" and made a few edits, such as conncecting the stems of the "m" and the "y". I thought the flexible stems relate to our core value of Adaptability.

NEGATIVE SPACE

I couldn't figure out what to do with the "o", as it felt out of place yet hard to incorporate. I got the idea to make use of negative space, leading to a very fluid look.

FEEDBACK AND ITERATION

While I didn't initially like the logo, my teammates and teachers seemed to really like it. One of my teachers suggested I shorten the tail of the "y" to bring symmetry to the logo. So I did just that, making the logo feel more balanced overall.

TEACHER FEEDBACK

My teacher remarked that while the logo looked nice, it didn't immediately communicate anything to him about the studio. He also noted that the "o" reminded him of toilet paper, which was not the intended idea.

DEMO FEEDBACK

One student said that our logos weren't communicating strength despite us mentioning muscle as a core idea, remarking that they looked more safe or baby-like. People also saw the toilet paper in the logo among other things, such as an elephant.

REFLECTION

As a result of not having a solid foundation for our team's identity, the logo I made didn't make much sense. While it looks nice, its lack of meaning gave way to multiple misinterpretations, as there was never a solid idea behind it in the first place. Going forward I'll think more about what I want the logo to communicate in advance.

STYLESCAPE

I made a stylescape using Figma to test out some fonts and colors, getting a feel for what the logo would look like in a practical setting. I chose the following colors:

Blue, to represent innovation, with a grounded dark shade.
Light Blue, to give a safer, more reliable tone.
Pink, to represent the color of muscle, as well as acting as a fun contrast to the blue.

I chose the font Bauhaus 95 as it was used in the wordmark, and Century Gothic for its simplicity and readability.

LOGO

CONTEXT

While my wordmark design wasn't used, it did inspire my teammates to try similar designs. My teammate Yassine made one with a similar "m-y" connection but with a thinner font. As we were adivsed to make the logo communicate our core values or themes, Yassine made a logo with a muscle in the "o".

While it looked nice, our teachers remarked that it seemed a band-aid fix rather than a proper solution. They suggested we look to animals or things that reflect our core values. We decided to completely scrap the muscle theme and focus on our value of Adaptability.