New Logo Design for Clonmellon Honey

Jan 16, 2009 by Jennifer Farley

Posted under: Blog, logo design

Clonmellon Honey is a small company – one person – producing delicious organic honey in Westmeath, Ireland. The honey is sold at farmers markets around Ireland and the client wanted to have something that looked more professional than the white sticky labels with text printed on it that he was using before. He wanted a logo that was professional, not too stuffy,a little bit old school and a bit “quirky”.

Initial sketches involved bees, honeycombs and various beehives. The final sketch I used is of a “skep” – this is old style beehive that really isn’t in use very much anymore and it’s not the style of hive my client uses. However it is recognised by many people as a traditional beehive. From there I took the name and the tagline “pure goodness” and tried out lots of different positions for the text including scrolls and circles.

The sketches were brought into illustrator, and this black and white version was produced which the client liked.

A couple of colour schemes were investigated, mainly natural earth tones of greens and browns but I wasn’t happy with the result. The client himself is very interested in Buddhism so after some discussion on this topic I tried the dark red and gold of the Buddhist monks robes! And we were both really happy with the result. The final colour logo is below and all comments are welcome.

You can see more logo designs in the portfolio.

Tags: Graphic Design, honey, Ireland, laughing lion design, logo design

4 Comments + Add Comment

Heather T. January 16, 2009 at 6:27 pm

Very cool! What’s the typeface?
Devlin January 16, 2009 at 10:29 pm

Great logo! I love the hand drawn look! As much as I like Illustrator, it is refreshing to see something that doesn’t look like it is solely created in a vector program. For some products that would be fine, but the hand drawn look and quirky type is perfect for a natural product like honey.

Thanks for discussing the use of images that are archetypal like the beehive. I do some work for various religious organizations and it is a struggle to find ways to use iconic images in fresh ways. Sometimes I get pulled to try different things and ignore the iconic image (Crosses, Stars of David, Crescent Moons etc…); but at the end of the day, iconic images are so powerful, that they must be addressed. I have found that the trick is, not to ignore the symbol or icon, but to surround the image with other graphic elements so that it gives it the proper context.

Your logo is a great example of this, by surrounding the iconic beehive with hand drawn elements it communicates homespun wholesomeness, care and goodness.

If you’ll forgive the puns, your honey logo is sweet, it should really get Clonmellon’s buisness buzzing! Sorry I couldn’t resist. Great job.
Jennifer Farley January 16, 2009 at 11:26 pm

Hi Heather, thanks! The font is called Chowderhead and it’s from fontdiner- their “Country Fair Picnic” set – http://www.fontdiner.com/menu_cfp.html – I love font diner.

Hi Devlin, thanks for your kind words and for taking the time to write such a considered response, I really appreciate it. You should put some more of your logos onto your portfolio. I really like the “Invasion of the Invasives” that you have on your site.
Nicola January 20, 2009 at 5:04 pm

Hi Jennifer! I really like the design! It has definitely met the brief of being both a bit old fashioned and quirky. Like someone else mentioned, it gives you a real homemade, country feel, but looks professional at the same time.
We tried to get some of this honey in before Christmas for our hampers, but I think we may have left it too late!

Nicolas last blog post..A Book That Looks Like a Chocolate Bar!