Intro
Logo redesigns are everywhere nowadays, all the big brands are re-inventing their brand idenity. The big questio2n, of course, is why?
In truth, I do not know for I am not a graphic designer. However, I do know that the DoNotes logo needed updating.
But before I can tell you that story, I must tell you this one...
The history of DoNotes branding
DoNotes the beginning
Unlike most brands, DoNotes started from a logo design initially, then the name was built around it. During a particularly boring class, I started doodling some random shapes that I thought might look cool in a logo. Eventually, I created this:
I thought it might be cool to turn that into a brand, and thus I created... (drumroll please!)
Unote!
What!? I hear you cry, that's not DoNotes.
Well, unfortunately (or fortunately), all the unote domains were either taken or too expensive, so I created this instead:
Look at that icon, it's donut because DoNotes sounds like Donuts... teehee
Now, I know what you're thinking... It's a bit bad, isn't it? Unsurprisingly, I agreed, and thus we move onto...
DoNotes the second
So, this is pretty much just as bad, but it stuck for a while because (as I said) I'm not a graphic designer so couldn't make a better logo for about 7 or 8 months until I decided enough was enough and I decided to actually take the DoNotes UI seriously. I chose a primary colour (that sadly we don't use anymore even though it's so cool), and began to work. I decided to create something simple, serious and strong and eventually settled on the following marvel of graphic injenuity...
Yes, it's not bad, but it's also really basic. Fortunately, I did have an icon to go with it but I believe it was just a recoloured freepik icon. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it, but I can find the next icon.
A new era
I had just finished college and was preparing for university. My spirits were high and creativity was inthe air. In all the excitement, I completely rebuilt DoNotes in such an awesome way it wouldn't even last my first 2 months at uni before I rebuilt everything again. If you want to learn more about DoNotes Nexus, click here.
But as part of Nexus, I created some brand new icons that I actually made myself!
Also, can we just appreciate how cool DoNotes looked before Nexus, like why did I get rid of this:
Anyways, here's the icon:
This icon isn't bad, I'm quite proud of it and it served me well. I finally made an icon myself and it was cool because it had rounded borders. Unfortunately it was a bit boring since it had nothing in the middle but I fixed it when I made a lightweight version for the "lightweight" version of DoNotes:
A new era
After DoNotes Nexus, I decided to redo everything properly. I did some research and decided to use React instead of PHP and vanilla JavaScript to build my app since React can make better UI with simpler-ish code. To celebratethe new era, I used AI to make the logo:
This isn't bad but it felt a bit overcomplicated, so when I started working on v7.1 (which is more like v8 but I already made v8 when I realized I forgot to give a version number to that one) I made it a bit simpler:
Also I changed the logo font from Raleway to Comfortaa, and I changed the main font used throughout DoNotes from Quicksand to Comfortaa too.
Why did I need to redesign the logo
As you can see, the logo from v7.1 and the beginning of v8 is fabulous, it clearly shows that this is a note-taking app, right?
Well, you see, it has a number of problems.
- Drawing is a very small, and (at the time of writing) currently broken, part of DoNotes
- It's really generic, and I wanted to build a brand instead of just a generic note-taking app
- It didn't feel right using AI to build a logo
So I went back to the drawing board and built this monstrosity:
It solved one of those problems, and it's not bad - I'm actually quite proad of it but it still wasn't unique enough, so I took inspiration from other leading note-taking apps lik Evernote and Notion, which use completely unrelated icons to the app function.
I decided to do something similar, but what to put for the icon?
After thinking about it for some time, I decided to use a donut, for old times sake and off I went to make my logo...
I quite like this logo, it's like a modern take on my original logo (I know the original is technically modern because 2021is moder but the original looks like it's 20+ years old so...)
And there you have it, my lovely logo journey.
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