Design a beautiful logo & website for KittyCat Rehoming

Cropping this cat image from its photographic frame, changes it from a static block into an organic form and allows the readers eye to move outward into the space. The silhouette and jewel like eyes create a focal point, while her off-the-edge cropping, peaking around a corner appears timid and suggests that the rest the cat is there just beyond our view.

Even with low contrast the lifelike cats eyes make an organic focal point that clarify the silhouette. Even though you know fine details like whiskers should be visible, you don’t really need them.

The cat silhouette and jewel like eyes create a focal point, a logo that is immediately recognised while her off-the-edge cropping, peaking around a corner at the end of the block of type appears timid and curious.

An important part of the bold, clean, uncluttered look is the name set in a block that can be placed in the proximity of the mark in several formats, landscape, square, or portrait.

Making a wordmark by combining a picture to replace a letter in the Kittycat rehoming name, creates a stylish compact logo. The silhouette is reminiscent of a cat basking in the warmth of a fire, it speaks volumes of hearth and home.

A word mark concept that combines two pictures to replace a letter in the Kittycat rehoming name, creates a stylish compact logo with two focal points that the eye rests on and moves between.

In the second iteration of the logo design as a proof concept, a client supplied sketch is developed faithfully.

The proof of concept approach involves testing various settings of type, positioning statement wording and colour harmonies.

With no typographic contrast between ‘KittyCat” and ‘Rehoming’, an appealing colour combination is the only way to separate the logo words for easy reading.

The final hot red and cool teal green colour combo is an attractive one that works well on light or dark backgrounds.

Website header logo proof of concept against light, medium and dark backgrounds.

Design eye appeal is only one factor in the logo design equation. A useful logo for KittyCat Rehoming Wairarapa requires concept, great execution, and most of all, clear thinking.

How do I increase the eye appeal of my KittyCat Rehoming logo?

Use a picture, especially of a cat, or use more pictures, say an icon that is immediately recognised as a home. People relate to pictures of familiar things like cats instantly.

And while I am working with the pictures, sketching up the vector artwork for the presentation, I put a lot of thought into the best positioning statement to go with KittyCat Rehoming. KittyCat Rehoming which has the benefit of a name for the organisation that really requires no further explanation. Is there anything to add to that name that would support it, make it better by making it more appealing? A good positioning statement or tagline under the logo will be absorbed.

Then, after design and form there’s the matter of colour to consider, study and prove by testing because excellence comes through curiosity and discovery, it doesn’t come at the press of a key.

Developing the colour theme for the logo in the design development and conceptualising stage is a demonstration of the method I use called “proof of concept.

KittyCat Rehoming’s logo aims to stir a specific feeling. That was a difficult undertaking that was achieved by a process of careful consultation with the client that together we succeeded in achieving.

It is my job as a designer job not simply to arrange elements aesthetically—as one would arrange flowers—but to organise information and spark interest from the audience.

KittyCat Rehoming logo design process

The first step in this project was adapting the business world’s most popular look to work for a not for profit community service organisation and to head up their brand new website.

For a logo to work well on the web it needs to be bold, clean, uncluttered and impressive.

The basic logo business system consists of business card, website header and letterhead. It can be expanded to include any number of items: envelopes, mailing labels, packaging, signage, with-compliments slips.

This look can be used for all of it. At its core is the KittyCat rehoming logo or “mark” and a separate block of text.

Starting with the logo

Creating a unique KittyCat Rehoming mark is an art, an exercise in distilling a complex cloud of possible ideas—the humane and charitable rehoming service, the attitudes and experience of the trustees and founders of the service—to its simplest, most direct expression, an image that can be recognised and understood at a glance. The symbolic logo images presented were manually traced into vector format from google image searches and reviewing literally hundreds of photos of cats and houses then filtering those down to final few that are most recognisable and readily understood.

Set name’s text a separate block, trial a shortlist of several candidate typefaces

An important part of the clean, uncluttered look is the name set in a text block, that has the flexibility of either being kept either separate or in close proximity to the mark.

The design of the KittyCat Rehoming website makes the cats for rehoming the heroes of the page

The website in its first iteration is a parallax scrolling single page website where the gallery of cats who are up for adoption are presented in a tiled mosaic of named portraits and a bullet point bio, where further information on the individual cat’s back story is available by drilling down to each one’s individual gallery. So strictly speaking not all of the content is available on one page.

Take a look

Credits

Web design/project management: MagentaDot Brands
Website content writing: Client
Content upload/site content management: MagentaDot Brands
Back-end support, front-end collab., project management support: nuweb designs