Visual Identity / Social Media

Legendary leader

Jason Patel’s vision is to “create Legendary Leaders, who are willing to sacrifice, work hard, and take risks to build solutions that will help our nation face the challenges of the 21st Century.” He wants “our young people to be strong, hopeful, and confident that the future bears more fruits than the past.” Visit Legendary Leader on YouTube.

DETAILS

Logo – vector based
Social Media Graphics

CREATIVE PROCESS

Provided by Client

The vision behind Legendary Leader was crystal clear. The logo and presence needed to embody: patriotism, history, hope, future, and a sense of breaking through today’s cynicism and hopelessness.

Research

Armed with a great mission statement, I researched symbolism and imagery that brought all of these qualities to light. This project was designed primarily by emotion as much as symbolism.

Insights

I really dove into what a true leader is:

we, not me
for the benefit of many
teamwork not dictatorship
an encourager
inspires many to positive action

I didn’t want to incorporate a particular gender or physical ability because some of the greatest leaders of our time had the greatest physical challenges to overcome. I wanted the image to feel hopeful, warm, strong, inspiring, and bold. I played with an edge of ‘grit’ and hand-done rather than ‘perfect’ because leadership isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. Learning and growing never ends. It’s open-ended.

Result

The final logo shows two L shapes mirroring and working with each other with an open-ended, limitless top. It has the feeling of strength, “superhero-ness”, and patriotism. The upward movement with the triangles and arrows point to the limitless future and growth potential. Also largely, this is a video platform, the triangle also invites the viewer to hit ‘play’ and learn.

In designing a YouTube banner, we need to keep in mind the different aspect ratios at are revealed on different devices: TV, tablet, smartphone, web browser, YouTube app. The revealed zone should look great regardless of where it’s seen.

The YouTube banner graphic is a dark, gritty background that has super-imposed hand-sketched elements on top of it. My vision was that the elements would be animated in motion – alive – turning while the video starts off dark, without hope… and then the bright light of the star comes in vibrantly and reveals the logo and the animated elements start also coming alive. I did not create the intro video used on the YouTube channel, but I did instruct my client what the vision I hoped would be. They did a GREAT JOB! It totally fit what I dreamed it could be.