01
Mailchimp didn’t want to do a massive overhaul, they just wanted to give their current mark a facelift—one of those classy facelifts that make your friends ask you if you’ve been sleeping better lately or lost some weight because you look like a more vivacious version of yourself and not like a different person. Overall the weight was lightened, the vector drawing improved, and letterforms were revised for legibility, especially at small sizes. The end result is something new and fresh, more refined but just as playful.
02
One of the first things I noticed about the existing logo is that the letterforms could use a little breathing room in some places. When the whitespace in counters are too tight or when the strokes connecting letters aren’t defined well enough it can affect legibility in a massive way (especially at small sizes). The areas highlighted in red were in particular need of attention.
03
The original logo has a lovely playful character, and I definitely wanted to make sure we didn’t “neuter” it by stripping away too much of that playfulness. I straightened the baseline out a tiny bit to make it read quicker, but not so much that it lost its casual penmanship feel.
04
When your goal is to make something that feels monoline, or all one line weight, you can’t just draw the mark as a single weighted stroke (well, you can, but it will appear heavier when strokes overlap). Whenever strokes meet up with one another, I taper the stroke so that it doesn’t feel overly heavy where they collide. You can do this very subtly so it’s barely noticeable, or a bit more deliberately (which you would want to do if a logo is only going to appear at small sizes). I compare these sorts of adjustments to stage makeup—actors on stage wear dramatic makeup so that you can see their features from the back row. Sometimes the adjustments that I make to a logo (or letterforms in general) need to look very deliberate so that when the mark shrinks down you can still see them.
05
The giant counter of the C created a large hole of whitespace in the middle of the original logo. I wanted to improve the positive and negative space relationship without completely changing the vibe of the mark so I narrowed the C a bit to close up that space. I also disconnected the l and C for a quicker read.
06
All in all, many small adjustments were made so that at small sizes the letterforms and logo read better. The color is also much more consistent (as in there are no “inky” parts).
07
And just for kicks, here are some of the earlier explorations of the logo including some wilder and curlier versions!
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