The Story of a Logo's Evolution - Pineconedream - Pineconedream by Gyaneshwari Dave

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One of the exciting announcements from Pineconedream this new year is…a new logo!

I had started to draft this post in October 2020 while working on my new logo in parallel, dear reader! And I am so happy now that I finally get to tell you all about it!

While I share with you the behind-the-scenes thought process about my logo, for the context of this post, first I will answer one of my most frequently asked questions about my brand.

Which of course is –

Why “Pineconedream”?

Whether it’s the inspiration for my creativity or a path to spirituality, I find all my meanings, questions & answers, in nature. When I wanted to create a brand that could represent my nature-inspired visual & written works, at once I thought of one of the most exquisite & curious objects found in nature – a Pinecone. It symbolizes nature, creativity, and spirituality – in a uniquely beautiful, yet unassuming fashion.

Here is why I consider pinecones special:

Pine trees are believed to be among the oldest plant species on earth and thus pinecones are rather ancient representatives of nature.
In many old as well as present-day cultures, pinecones are considered sacred emblems of human enlightenment and spiritual awakening.
With that distinctly elegant geometrical design of spines spiraling in a Fibonacci sequence in both directions, a pinecone also intrigues me as a perfect piece of creativity.

Read my poem about pinecones, “Forests In My Basket“!

Inspiration For The Logo

Fascinated by their charm and enigma, I often find myself picking up pinecones from under those majestic pine trees. There, they are almost always resting on the ground tilted at roughly 45 degrees! I took inspiration for my logo right from that resting pinecone under a tree.

I made stylized “p” & “d” and made them fit inside a tilted abstract shape of a green pinecone, posing against each other poetically. Of course, they represented “pinecone” & “dream” respectively. Since April of 2018, you have seen this logo on all my works, promotional graphics, social media, etc.

The Logo’s Evolution

I am not a full-time graphic designer. However, managing the marketing aspects of my creative works involves a lot of graphic designing (which I really enjoy by the way), combine it with a Master’s in Business Administration, and I have always savored the creative & intellectual challenge of designing and analyzing a logo.

Actually, the evolution of a brand identify never stops, and a logo must keep up to date with it. After all, a logo is the most visual representation of a brand’s voice, values & philosophy.

“It looks like an elegant pendant of a necklace!”. A friend had commented on the 2018 logo when it first came out. Well, the logo did look beautiful as well as interesting. However, in the little under three years that I have worked on refining my work, the following doubts have kept cropping in my mind from time to time –

On the subtler side of branding, I was skeptical about how effectively it engages a nature lover in general, or reminds one of a pinecone in particular at the very first glance, and consequently how much recall value does it have for those individuals. In addition to that, there are some places where people are not familiar with Pinecones. For them, the logo left them confused. Because its shape – only the abstract, tilted Pinecone could not help them make a visual connection even at a high level and relate it with nature.
From the aesthetics point of view, although the logo looked quite feminine, it lacked the gentleness of nature. Probably it also did not feel as down to earth, and graceful as nature herself would like it to be – after all, my work represents nature and my brand identity must entail the elegance and simplicity of nature above and beyond everything else.
On the strictly technical side, I was not very happy about the subtle lack of symmetry, especially when I looked at it in a small size thumbnail.

So one day I finally decided to act on all the above and re-imagined my tilted Pinecone logo. And…I came up with this brand new design!

So what did I do this time? Well, I kept the basic abstract shape of the tilted Pinecone intact. I removed the “p” & “d” from it, picked up the “petals” from my logotype (the roots of the “i” and the canopy of the “m”), and built a pinecone from them. Simple!

I am hopeful I have done this little visual rebranding right and Pineconedream will be able to speak to its nature-loving tribe with much more ease now. You may keep stumbling upon my old logo on my old works as well as hundreds of marketing & website graphics till all of that gets buried down with time and/or I am done with replacing it wherever possible…But at least now you know it has evolved into something newer! Do let me know your thoughts on my new logo in the comments section below.