Evolution of Climate Rubik's logo design

Introduction

The logo for Climate Rubik was designed by Anum Usman. She is the founder graphic designer of Dirac-Delta Inc, based in Edmonton, Canada. This write-up, as a dialogue between Anum and Rajesh, shows the iterative process for the logo design. The logo was originally designed for the organization's previous name- Anabe Labs. Then I decided to rebrand under the current name Climate Rubik and had to redesign the logo. This write-up shows the evolution of the current logo from its origins.

Organizational values of Anabe Labs

Rajesh: I was looking for a logo to emphasize the motto of 'prioritizing human ethics over technology to address climate change'. At the same time it would be good for the logo to have elements from the fungal world (mycelium network or the mushrooms, fruiting body of the fungi) to symbolically reflect its role in providing solutions to humans for climate change (For example soil accounts for 75 percent of all terrestrial carbon and much of this accumulated carbon is originated from the root associated fungal network inside the soil). The representation of fungi would convey the interdisciplinary focus of this platform. Hence, I went with the word Anabe-Kannada word for mushrooms (fruiting body of the mycelium) and Labs to represent science-based publishing.

Logo design challenges

Anum: The biggest challenge was incorporating somewhat abstract concept of the company's motto into the logo in a way that would be easily recognizable by people. Rajesh wanted a logo that was unique and did not use many of the elements that a lot of modern logos are using so it could stand out.

Logo iterations for Anabe Labs

Anum: We explored many concepts of the logo in our iteration as presented below:

• Mycelium network that became part of the name Anabe Labs, along with a leaf to incorporate nature/climate.

• Logo with liberty cap fungi and a mycelium background behind it

• Combination of mycelium and turkey tail fungi, where they blended into each other to show interdisciplinary approach.

• Mycelium, a hand and a gear in a circle to show the interdisciplinary nature of technology, climate resilience and nature.

The colors for the above versions were based on an earthy palette that best described the company's approach towards climate and nature.

Rajesh: The above versions captured the fungal representation, but the motto of the company was not embedded in a self-evident manner. To rectify, Anum went back to the drawing board to adopt a layered approach to highlight the motto. The layer of technology in the form of a semiconductor chip was overlapped with a behavioral layer (human face) to show the intersection of these two values, as seen below:

The fungal element was reintroduced into the logo on the behavioral layer with 3 variants as seen in the subsequent iterations:

The third variant in the above iteration was chosen with change in the mushroom location and colors were finalized.

The final Logo of Anabe Labs

Anum: Technology is shown by the greyed-out semiconductor chip behind the human head which represents the emphasis on behavioral change. The mushroom is placed where the brain is, as it's an integral part of the company name.

The colors chosen are very earthy, yet bold. Dark forest green gives a sense of earthiness and a climate friendly approach. Burgundy brings a sense of warmth and boldness to the logo.

The font is Oswald in SemiBold variation. Sans serif font type shows efficiency and modernity. The SemiBold version makes the company look modern and approachable.

Rebranding to Climate Rubik

Rajesh: I had to rebrand to Climate Rubik because many of the readers struggled to pronounce and remember the word Anabe. They got mixed up with the English lady's name-Anabel. Some felt the word 'Anabe' was cryptic. So, I had to find an alternative word to represent the interdisciplinarity and multi-dimensional aspects of Climate Change. I felt the Rubik's cube analogy was useful fit for this messaging and keeping the word Climate in the organization's name would be broad and straightforward to the readers.

The first thing in our rebranding discussion was to replace the mushroom from the logo with Rubik cube. Also, I felt the logo was bit 'hectic' with three elements (chip, cube, and the human face). Hence, we decided to strip it two elements, but there was confusion on which two elements to keep. To simplify further, I told Anum it would be sufficient to show the human face becoming climate conscious instead of grappling with the choice of two elements or symbolically represent the convergence of human thought to go beyond technology to address climate change. The sketch below shows the logo iterations for the rebranding:

Logo iterations for Climate Rubik

Concluding notes

The font originally proposed by Anum was Calibri, I did some research in the Google fonts knowledge base and went with Nunito instead for calm and humanist features to it. Also, Nunito font was natively supported by Ghost CMS as well. I was bit conflicted with Roboto font which was more popular web font but the aesthetic appeal of Nunito was stronger for me.

To conclude, the final logo feels very magical for me. The color gradient within the human face shows the emergence of 'climate conscious' and the cut out white petals makes the logo beautiful. The choice of pinkish bold color by Anum makes the logo text striking. Anum also suggested to go with small caps for the logo text to have a welcoming tone for the younger readers of the website.

The logo redesign and simplification for Climate Rubik with Anum reminded me of Apple using Picasso’s bull template to make minimalist designs for their products. 

I am grateful to Anum for this logo.