Well that was embarrassing.
Twenty five years ago I set up my website design studio in Farnborough. One of the first things I did was make sure I had a unique and memorable logo for 22i design. Because the name came from the fact that I had a custom tuned-up 2.2 fuel injected engine in my Opel Manta coupe, the 22i Design logo was created to look like a chrome name badge for a car. It was the year 2000 and I was comfortable with being arty and retro. In fact I even had a book on airbrush techniques on my shelf and it was full of chrome effects.
So I created the very first 22i Design logo in Corel PhotoPaint and experimented with gradients to see if I could emulate the chrome badge and get the ground and the sky in the reflection.
Obviously the first job was to choose an appropriate font. I trawled a few places online and I think it was DaFont.com where I selected a couple of contenders. I briefed myself to find a typeface that was technical enough to look like it belonged on the boot of a car but also “joined up” for some reason.
After rejecting one of the fonts for not being pretty enough, I settled on the final one, got the letters in place, tweaked the kerning, then vectorised them, merged the shapes into sets and finally into a group. Then applying styles to the one group gave the whole badge a uniform reflection.
I tinkered with the gradient fill until I was happy that the badge looked stylish, yet realistic. And it was different too. It didn’t need to be like all the other fonts around at the time, especially not the ones with “swooshes” which were all the rage (Remember the website SwooshNoMore?)
Tick, Tock, Twenty Five Years…
And that was that. Twenty five years rolled by and then one day I decided to resurrect the 22i website. It needed freshening up. The logo was great but starting to look very dated. Maybe it had done for a long time but I was too busy to notice it.
In fact, thinking back, I redesigned the logo about four years ago and had a similar problem…
I forgot which font I’d used!
Back in 2021 I decided that 22i Design wasn’t the right name any longer. I was doing far less design and so much more digital marketing. The domain names, website hosting, email services and IT were also still in demand, so I was thinking about rebranding as 22i Digital.
I created a more “flat” logo and had issues with remembering which font I’d used. But eventually I found it.
Then the same happened just recently. I kept thinking “Nixon Script” but when I looked, it was the one that I eventually rejected in favour of the other font. What was it called? Who designed it? Why am I thinking of Ray Larabie?
It took a few attempts, even trawling through font catalogues online, but eventually, using Perplexity AI, I asked the tool for the most famous Larabie fonts. And the prompt got me exactly what I wanted…
Deftone Stylus!
Now that was annoying. I’d been playing the “White Pony” CD in the car that week. I even looked for a t-shirt for my daughter as a gift. Deftones are one of my favourite bands. And yet I couldn’t remember the name of the font of my own logo!
So yeah, that was silly. I designed a logo twenty five years ago and forgot which logo I chose, despite having a huge clue right in front of me that week.
And the moral of the story is?
Document everything. Just as all my digital marketing and website work has a ReadMe file with every last detail in it, so too does 22i Design & Digital now.
If you’d like me to remember your typeface when I design your logo, call me on 01252 692 765 and I’ll make absolutely sure I document it this time 😉
Now, as a typical designer, I’m still not 100% happy with my new logo, so I will be looking at it again very soon, and we’ll have a better version again, so keep ’em peeled. In the meantime, we’re going with the 22i Digital flat version because that’s all we have time for x
