Archutech Consulting, Inc. - web site design

In initial consultation with Archutech Consulting, we identified the desire for a sleek and sophisticated site design that was corporate and professional. We chose several sites that exist around the internet, and asked Archutech how they liked each site. Archutech preferred IBM.com's overall look and feel. Within this, Archutech desires easy client portal access, and website news.

Before

Eclectic Tech took the existing Archutech logo, chose a set of complimentary and contrasting colors, and began to figure out exactly what they wanted. Similar colors to those in the logo were avoided, because the original Archutech logo contained many gradients of blue.

Nearing the finalization of the website design, Archutech allowed us to present them with proposals for new logo designs. See the case study below. The reasons we urged them to change the logo for the business include problems with scaling the logo (the original program could not scale the logo without changing the background pattern, and changing the size in other programs altered the resolution of the background pattern), problems creating a black & white or laser printed versions of the logo (the pattern from the art program that was used would not be as pretty in greys or dithered).

Website design: The layout bears some resemblance to IBM's site, while not duplicating it. The image of the woman in the conference room was found on Flickr and is used under an attribution-only creative commons license. Link to the photo credit is discreet but accessible at the bottom of every page, filling the legal requirements adequately.

Corporate Identity

The four rounds of logo design for this client went very fast, unlike most of my other corporate identity clients to date.

First Draft

Utilizing the play-on-words for "Architect" I had pictured using a compass as the initial A. However, the company isn't an architect company, so this idea, while cute, was not going to work. I also played with "arc"s, since the company name is pronounced ARC-U-tech (not ARCH-U-tech), but arcs and arches are too easily confused here.

I broke some major best-practice rules in designing this logo. I designed it on a black background, and in colors. We already had a good idea of the colors, 4-color business cards are planned, and the logo was going to be used in the web design I had already created, replacing the old "Archutech" logo, and the background was going to be black. Most of the time I will be designing logos in black, on white, and colorizing them late in the design process.

Second Round

Round 2

My client gave me very specific feedback about what he liked and did not like in round one, which helped me quickly revise and come up with fresh approaches for Round Two, as well as some re-attempts with ideas he thought he might like to see again from Round One. You can pretty easily see how the first round evolved into the second round.

Third Round

Round 3

The client liked my first logo attempt in round two the most, so now it was more a matter of refinement and mild variation brought into Round Three. You can see my lame attempt to re-introduce the "arc" idea in the fourth sample -- neither I or the client liked it. Someone wise said to never include things like that, because the client would inevitably choose your least favorite. That didn't happen this time.

Finalized Design & Suggested Variants

Final

Both the client and I agreed that explicitly spelling Archutech next to the circled "AC" was the best, so at this point all I did was present the client with some variations for different backgrounds. On the website, which was going to be one of the more important venues, the logo would be on a black background. On newsprint or laser print, the final bottom-right variant or the bottom left would be fine. I made a white-background variant in case he needed it as well.