Vespa Sun Logo | Jeremy Bolton

In design (like life) we sometimes have no choice but to work with the cards we are dealt. Or in this case, the company name I was dealt. As part of a class project this quarter we were given two random words (pulled from a box) and were told to use these two words to design a logo. As far as words drawn I was rather fortunate to draw “vespa” and “sun”, though a link between the two was not immediately apparent.

Over the course of a week I created dozens of sketches and began making rough comps on the computer. I felt the challenge of this assignment (like the challenge of most logo designs) was to find the simplest common denominator that gave visual credit to both the sun and the vespa. The more I worked the more I saw that the forms of the wheel/tire and the sun/rays would work well together.

The final design is shown above. The logo uses an abstract shape that lends itself to represent both the sun and its rays as well as a tire’s treads with forward movement. It also gives credit to the “V” in Vespa in the center of the abstract mark, though this is something only I as the designer would probably notice.

This exercise was a great way to take two random words and find a way to conceptually fuse them into a cohesive logo. It also goes to show that even with a less than ideal company name there is (almost) always a solution that can be simply and effectively created.