November 9th, 2013
Inspiration often comes from the humble and often overlooked elements in our environment. In this case I swiped a color palette and an interesting shape from a manhole cover (AKA a sewer grate, AKA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Hideout Entrance) and turned it into a simple logo.
The color palette comes from the earth tones of the concrete and asphalt, the shadows of the metal manhole cover, and the red spray paint. The shape is a small circle surrounded by a triangle, surrounded by another circle found in the upper right of the relief in the manhole cover.
Using Adobe Illustrator I pulled the color palette with the eyedropper tool, then created the compound shape of circles and a rounded triangle using the shape and pen tools. Next I divided the shape with the pathfinder tool using a similar 3 axis split that is used in the design of the entire manhole cover seen in the photo. After that I experimented with a few color combinations using various tints and shades of the color palette I had put together, applying the different colors to the different sections of the shape. Finally, I found a combination I liked and created a simple geometric patterned background with low opacity rectangles.
The end result is pretty cool, and the original shape before I started messing with it is great too. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with simple, memorable shapes in any kind of design. Luckily those simple shapes are pretty easy to find if you keep an eye out.