Well, the time has come for a serious makeover to BrightMix.com. This website’s original layout was a slightly modified template for Mephisto, our blog software (go here and select “neon” from the drop down to see the original.) We received some complaints about it being a bit too weird… garish… and neon. However, before we were willing to take the time to redesign the site, we needed to get a real logo.

Our Logo Design Process

It took a good chunk of time for us to settle on a logo, partly because we couldn’t come up with any solid ideas and partly because our name doesn’t really represent anything. If we had picked a name like Blue Buzzard or Fog Creek Software, well, it would’ve been a little easier

Anyway, we were pretty certain that we needed an insignia as part of the logo; we didn’t know exactly what that insignia would be, other than something that was unique and representative of us.

So, we read a lot about other small company’s branding efforts and figured we’d try out similar brainstorming tactics. Here are some of our initial ideas:

We discovered that it was far too easy to put too much thought and meaning into a logo. I mean, it’s simple to say we want a logo that says we’re smart, cutting-edge, trendy, and fun, but portraying all of those descriptions, all at once, is very difficult. For instance, this logo is trying to portray just a little too much and becomes somewhat confusing:

Not really finding anything that felt right, we worked with our friends at the Granger Group to experiment and come up with ideas.

At some point, Bob from Granger came up with this and we really liked it. It was simple and had a cool and unique font:

We tweaked it a bit by altering the fonts and swapping out the little people out for real i’s (we felt they were too gimmicky). A couple of days later we had our final logo, which sits atop this page. A big thanks to the Granger Group for helping us find something we like!

Fixing the Site’s Colors

With our logo in the bag, we just need to integrate it into the existing site. After some color matching and graphics editing (admittedly, mostly done by Dusty), the site was looking pretty good. While he was at it, he revamped the blog commenting section, which is now much cleaner and allows for markup, and added a Flickr gallery to bottom of the page to show off some of the realness of our company.

We’re pretty pleased with the new site. It’s not super-amazingly-awesome, but it’s leaps and bounds better than the old one. In case you never saw the old site, here is a side by side comparison of old and new:

Your Feedback Appreciated

We’d love to hear what you think about the new site. Is it good / bad / better / worse / terrible / you’d rather stare at flashing spyware ads? Leave us a comment!