Designing the "We Are Stronger Than Censorship” Logo

Hello! My name is Jon Fischer, and I am the designer of the “We Are Stronger Than Censorship” logo. My fascination with logos probably started when I was around 7 or 8, as I would find myself trying to draw and duplicate my favorite sports logos and uniforms.

To this day, designing a logo is definitely my favorite part of being a graphic designer, so when I was approached to design this logo, I was ecstatic about the opportunity to work on such a unique project! I’d like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what went into the logo, the thought processes behind the design, and how we arrived at the final logo! Step 1: The Creative Brief The Creative Brief is usually a few bullet points or sentences that give the designer or design team an outline of what the client is looking for in the finished project.  It may include the overall message, the target audience, and other details like tone or inspirations, that can help the designers and client align their goals.

For this project, there were four main objectives that the final logo should meet:

• Optimistic
• Punk rock/indie spirit—an “in your face” to the people who ban books
• Hopeful
• A celebration of the power of books centered on marginalized communities

Step 2: Rough sketches

In this step, I always start out with three main tools: a sheet of paper, a ball point pen, and my brain!  Rough sketches should always be just that: rough!  By using a pen, I allowed myself to make mistakes, and not being able to erase is a good way to continually build off of an idea or concept that I might not have liked at first.  The rough sketches are probably my favorite part of a design, because I can just let my mind go, and not have to worry about anything being a “bad idea” or a “good idea.”  Nothing in this step is wrong, and there are no set amount of sketches that you need to achieve to come up with a concrete idea.

Step 3: Revised sketches

After I felt like the rough sketches were in a good place, I started to look for the concepts that I felt might be the strongest and had the most potential to move forward.  Again, there was no set amount of sketches that needed to be achieved.  After selecting a few that I liked the most, I moved them to a sheet of graph paper so I could start to refine the sketches.  I used a pencil in this step, as it is key to start cleaning up lines and shapes, and start to work towards making elements more proportionate to each other.  These are the sketches that I then sent out for review.

Step 4: Choose a direction, and revise some more!

After reviewing the first revised sketches, we gravitated towards one concept: a “Do Not Enter” street sign with an abstracted book opening from the top.  While the initial sketch had the book more contained within the circle, the next round of sketches focused on opening up the book more, as a way to symbolize rising above censorship.  We also felt like a “type only” treatment for the logo, one that emphasized words more than an icon/symbol, could be a strong design option.

Step 5: Computer mock-ups

This step is where things really come to life!  After choosing a revised sketch we liked, I began to work in Adobe Illustrator to start to create a better vision of what we wanted in the final design.  Here is where I experimented with line weights, enclosures, and other design elements, as well as color.  Although we pretty much knew that this design would be red and black.  I also began to look at typographic treatments, as typography is always key to a successful design.

Step 6: Revise some more!

After choosing the icon/symbol we felt was strongest, as well as a good direction for the typography, it was time to clean things up some more.  While I was dead-set on using Futura Bold as the typeface (because of the round capital “O”), the first actual type treatment was pretty rough.  I now focused on adding more vertical space between the lines of text and adding a little more space between the letters themselves.  At this step, it was also important to see what the design looked like as a plain black-on-white design, as well as a reversed white-on-black.  Not every design will be used in full color all of the time!  We initially thought we would do two different options for the logo: one with a large icon to the left of the type, and one without that was more focused on the type itself. We settled on the type-only version as it made the "WE ARE STRONGER THAN" visually more powerful than the book bans and challenges - shown as the icon in the 'o' of censorship.

Step 7: Final design

With a few small adjustments here and there, we arrived at the final design. The end result of the design process gave us a fantastic image:

A powerful symbol that we are stronger than censorship!