Designing a logo for a training conference in Africa comes with special perks and challenges.
We spent days researching Africa-inspired logos, watching music videos about Africa, and listening to African music playlists on Spotify.
All of that became the following series of mockups:
The client was not enthusiastic about either… She said, “I don’t want an animal. I want colors. And maybe a tree.”
So we took her words and did what every designer does: We explored (aka created a super rough mockup in order to get a feel for multiple ideas to refine).

Still not great. So we dropped our head on the desk and prayed. And that’s when we looked through my “Africa logo inspiration” folder and thought, hey, what if we combine my favorite part from multiple logos, and draw a whispy, watercolor-ish tree?

Fonts used: Norwester. Candy Texture. Raleway.
Ta-dah! The client loved it. We loved it. And it became the standard for the following conferences in the series.


The logos also needed to be turned into horizontal thumbnails to fit the special event section on the website.

Fonts used: Norwester. BlackJack. Raleway.