The Urban Yogi

About the Project

The business owner of ‘The Urban Yogi’, Jayesh Nambiar contacted me earlier last year to rebrand his business identity starting with the logo and then build the mobile app.

After a few rounds of emails clarifying Jayesh’s requirements, I shared the logo design questionnaire with him which was promptly filled out.

The Design Brief

Here is a bit of background information on The Urban Yogi:

The Urban Yogi is an online yoga studio designed for people who wish to instill yoga practice in their daily routine. Sessions are tailor-made for students irrespective of their level of experience, life stage, or aspirations.

After reading through Jayesh’s completed questionnaire, I understood that he was looking for a unique and clean logo that portrayed his whole business model. More importantly, it had to have a “character”. The logo also should be suitable for social media, mobile app, business cards and t-shirts.

This was the old logo that was to be rebranded.

Sketching and Development

I brainstormed and sketched down my ideas and then experimented with them on the computer. The challenge that I had was incorporating his personality into the logo while still making it look clean and simple. I got around this problem by brainstorming and word association.

My thought process went something like this: Yoga > Pose > Instructor > Identity > Unique Features
Below you will find one of the original pages of sketches that I did for The Urban Yogi logo.

Exploring Typeface

Below are some of many, different typefaces I tried and circled in red, the typeface chosen for the logo. The Futura typeface was chosen because it is highly geometric. Just like a perfect yoga pose, it features clean and precise proportions and symmetry.

The Vector Version

From the photograph, the most striking features of him to me were his glasses and beard. That is how I got the idea of using those in the logo. After all, the instructor’s face is the most relatable element of the class to online students. With this general idea in my head I experimented with the concept in Adobe Illustrator and researched different types of spectacle frames, beards, layouts, icons, etc.

Color Palette

Purple is the color that symbolizes achievements gained and achievements yet to come - perfectly represents yoga as people mostly practice yoga to boost their health, happiness, self-esteem and confidence.

The Final Version