Flourishing Play

No. 001

Logo Design

Case Study

Student work

Personal development

Flourishing play
therapy.

Claire from Flourishing Play Therapy needed a logo that reflected the values of her practice which specialises in play therapy for children who need support.

She asked that the logo was someting floral and shows growth but otherwise, I was free to create what I thought would be suitable. Text-based logos are my forte and it felt natural to include the flowers into the type. The logo we settled on has a little anxious “i” that grows into a confident flower, demonstrated by linking the “L” in play and the “i” in the above word “Flourishing”. We kept the colours playful but fairly muted as even though Claire works with children, the predominant audience is for the child’s grown-ups and should be taken seriously.

Fig. 01 - Final Logo

Fig. 02 - Other Logo Concepts

I tried a few different variations but ultimately, the logo she chose shows growth with the little "i" in "flourishing" growing into a big happy flower by linking the "L" in "play" with the second "i" in "flourishing". this symbolises the benefits of play therapy for the children who need it and how after the process they can also be flourishing little flowers. The font overall is relatively simple and corporate but the pops of colour and the wiggly lines bring in a youthful and playful element to the logo.

Logo development

My process involves research first and foremost; who is the target audience? What are the services provided? etc. I then go to quick sketches and try to have some idea of what I want to refine on my iPad or directly in Illustrator.

Some of the ideas are, quite frankly, bonkers but no idea is a bad idea in the development stage and the terrible ideas can often turn into something worth working with.

The L in Flourishing extending down to the L in Play looks awful in the example but that initial doodle eventually evolved into the final logo.

I am mourning a little loss for the bottom right version of the logo. It even got as far as trying out a coloured variation! I think the hand lettered text is fun and bouncy and the word "flourishing" is like a little rainbow. However, the negative space next to "play" niggled me and it looks like it might be more relevant to a play school rather than therapy.