AZO Logo Development Dale Abbott is a Graphic Design student at CNM who also works part time as a Graphic Designer for Lam & Associates, a public relations firm here in Kalamazoo. Lam & Associates handles all the PR for the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport and one day Dale’s boss came to her and said “see what you can come up with for a new logo for the airport; take a look at the concept drawings of the new terminal for inspiration— I’m thinking something swooshy.”
With these inspirations in mind she created a series of arches in Illustrator and combined them in different ways and tried several placements. The airport’s call letters are AZO which had been incorporated in the previous logo, so she used the letters in some of her concepts. Red and blue is a common color scheme for airports and airlines so she used these colors, but experimented with variations of tone.
Dale got busy looking at the architectural renderings for the new terminal, researching other small to medium sized airports’ logos and doodling her thoughts and inspirations. The roofline of the new terminal building has an off-set arch. When recreating this on paper it also had a feeling of a bird’s wing (another good reference to flight). As Dale pondered on the purpose of an airport she kept thinking “it gets you from point A to point B” and she found herself drawing an arch back and forth between two points.
Dale worked on logo concepts for a couple hours one day and a couple of hours the next when her boss said “let’s see what you’ve got.” She sent him the 5 designs she had that were far enough along to present. Her boss selected his favorite and a few refinements were made—more intentional typography, scale and placement adjustments were made. Then the logo was emailed off to the airport for review. They got a call back the same day—they loved the new logo. Now Dale needed to get busy on new identity pieces and some print ads to unveil the new look!
Rough Concepts:
AZO
Kalam azoo |BattleCreek InternationalA irport
AZ 25
Kalam azoo |BattleCreek InternationalA irport
AZO
Kal am az oo /Bat tle Creek Interna tional Airport
Kalam azoo |BattleCreek InternationalA irport
Kal am az oo /Bat tle Creek Interna tional Airport