The Story of Zen Juice

Client wanted a logo for a new franchise he was starting. He had gone to some of the big agencies and was disappointed when they quoted thousands of dollars for a Corporate ID. In my logo questionnaire, he wrote,

“Easily recognizable, trendy, sophisticated, and still be appetizing and fun. Want an easy to read logo that is distinctive and could be turned into signage for a store front! I would like colors that are appetizing but not that are not too ice cream shop / candy parlor...I like orange, green, and red …remember, this is going to be turned into signage so bright colors attract more people to your store front at night when compared to dull colors. I would like to incorporate the Zen Buddha guy if possible….kind of how Starbucks has that lady ..or maybe the Buddha with Zen juice under it ? "

His concept for an upscale juice bar was a great idea as well as the name "Zen Juice" . Sometimes I am inspired with many ideas and I felt sure that one of my ideas was going to work for him.

Concept 1: Zen Elements

Concept 2: Sophisticated Buddha/Juice Stamp

I was wrong ...none were quite right, especially my take of the “Buddha”. I had hung onto the words "sophisticated and trendy" as my guides, but now he redirected my thinking to strong store frontage. Much thicker fonts and he did want it to be a friendly place.

Round 2: Font presentation with graphical elements

Since a concept hadn't been chosen, I wanted to focus on the font and interweave some some graphical choices.

Round two of concepts was a lot closer to what he envisioned. The concept chosen was a traditional, happy, fat Buddha between the "zen" and the "juice". But the Buddha was still not right. After looking high and low we found a Buddha statue that was clean and symmetrical and could be my guide, but the face was all wrong. So I incorporated a friendly childlike face, and the Buddha was of course holding a juice cup. After many, many revisions a final Buddha image appeared.

So now we could go on to finalize the fonts, color, and placement.

Client chose my first choice for a font. It was easy to read yet was ornate just enough to lend a sophisticated twist to it. We switched out the colors and played with the layout of the design.

Client loved the Buddha within the sliced citrus fruit, which was actually on the the first round of concepts I had presented, but with the wrong font. Plus the original Buddha image was initially rejected. It is the job of a good designer to sometimes represent ideas. The sliced fruit expanded into the Buddha, enclosing it and acting as a branding stamp.

He also was now unsure about the font choice and wanted to see a plainer font. Client thought the lower case san serif font was a better choice for his storefront. But I kept the ornate font within the emblem. Next, his direction was to enlarge the letters, remove the "zen juice" from the cup, have the Buddha hold the juice cup, more traditional, and clean up some of the lines even further- and alas we had an approved logo!!!

All my hard work is worth it when at the end I hear the client say, "this is exactly want I wanted!". He had a smart enough business sense to know that this will be the face of his company for at least ten years and it had to be just right. So now that you understand what it take to get a perfect logo, let’s hope that the guy that wants to pay for only an hour of a designer's time for a logo is your direct competition!!

So if I would have designed this logo in Photoshop, this storefront sign would have never been possible. To complete this Logos 101 course, please visit "What the heck is 'vector'?