I was recently approached by Barrington Real Estate Investment Services (BREIS), a growing real estate investment firm operating in the Chicago area, to assist them with the design of their logo. During our initial discussions about the project, I referred them to a 6 minute video called The Art of Logo Design to help give an idea of all that goes into designing a logo.

Their marketing director had already selected the font they were going to use and put together some logo sketches with a general idea of what they wanted. Here is the initial sketch that was presented to me:

The concept was a beautiful one! The shape at the top gave the impression of a professional office building with windows. In my initial Illustrator layout, I made a few modifications, including bending the side bars outward instead of inward to remove the impression of a church or cap, making thicker lines on the outside of the building to distinguish the building structure from the inside windows, and aligning the real estate text at the bottom into more of a solid foundation:

At this point we decided to simplify by removing the bottom “real estate” text and just stick with “BREIS”. In its place we would create a short slogan that could optionally go with the logo to quickly express the main idea and purpose of the company. We also confirmed the exact shade of blue that we would like to use for colored versions of the logo. On my next round of edits, I tried using a solid color to build the shape in a more simple, streamlined way. I no longer needed the black lines to distinguish the shape and we extended the inside cross beams to the outside to create cool 3D shapes that distinctly built the logo:

Finally, the client asked us to change the solid color into a gradient for a modern touch. We chose a linear gradient to draw the eye down toward BREIS and maintain the message of stability:

I was grateful for this opportunity to partner with BREIS in helping them to visually communicate their goals through an effective logo design. I look forward to watching their business continue to grow and expand in the days to come.