Cannon & Canoe - Rebrand

A rebrand of my own design pseudonym, I decided to freshen up the identity as well as the web site (Coming soon)

The old identity was four or five years old and was starting to look dated, I wanted to take some time to freshen up my own brand.

The origins of the name 'Cannon & Canoe' are born out of an old phrase bodybuilders and in particular Arnold Schwarzenegger would champion 'You can't shoot a cannon from a canoe' meaning you can't have a big strong upper body and a small weak legs, or a base. Firing a big, heavy, powerful cannon out of an unsteady base like a canoe wouldn't work, neither does building a big upper body and neglecting to train your legs. It was this analogy that made me realise the same applies to design, without substance and reason of a solid base or idea there can't be built a reputable brand.

I wanted to tie together this analogy without being too obvious, I wanted a crisp legible identity, but somehow to work in the cannon and the canoe. I decided to use a font that I've always loved and used on a few occasions in it's different weights, Gotham, in this case Gotham Medium. 

I wanted something subtle with regards the canoe, in the previous iteration, I anchored the centre of the logo with the ampersand and a canoe paddle and a 'rammer' used to pack in the cannon ball. Looking back it seems a juvenile idea, I liked it at the time but it always seemed unbalanced due to the extra letter in 'cannon'.

This time I decided to turn the 'A' into the bow or stern of the canoe, slightly bending the legs of the A and removing the crossbar. For the Cannon the 'O' made an obvious choice for a cannon ball, but just having an O with no counter unbalanced the logo and it look odd. I decided to reduce the size of the O to symbolise the end of the barrel opening.

I used a different font for the ampersand, I wasn't too keen on the Gotham ampersand, I used 'brown' for this and tweaked it to square off one the upper lick.

I think I achieved the conciseness and the legibility I wanted but still created a workmark that fuses elements of the name with a contemporary mature logo that improves on the original.