"I think you are orange ..."

Well that's what Patrick said. Dealing with this slightly bizarre thought early on a Friday afternoon was just the opening gambit in the development of our new logo.

"Orange, then", I said, "I guess the future's bright, but let's try not to get tangoed." Patrick runs a marketing and PR agency that we brought in to help us - and here are some of the things we learned from him and from gt&i (doing the heavy-lifting on the design work).

Logos are rather personal. It seems that they do a lot more than they used to. My position was always that the logo should be the company name, pretty much nothing added and nothing taken away. This was the logo that we had - 5 minutes at the kitchen table - off we go. Pick a primary colour, how hard can it be? Surely we would never have the resources to develop a logo into an image that actually "stood for something" - or even stood for us.

Our logo journey started by discussing the colours that spoke about what we do. PrimaDollar is a finance company (ok, blue then), but innovative and technological (ok, must be red), though we need to be trusted (purple? no, too ecclesiastical), but given the markets we work in, we have to be socially responsible (sounds like green) - but also we are international, exciting and we are here to make a profit (so that's why you are orange). It seems that orange is the colour of 2017, the colour that says we are alternative, responsible but also dynamic and commercial. I buy that - let's move on. But then it turns out there are a million shades of orange, from shouty-bright to almost-brown. We are not shouty, and we are not brown - so we go for something that we feel stands out without shouting. We are on the way.

This was the easy bit.

We all agreed that our logo needs to include the full company name "PrimaDollar". Unless you have Nike's marketing budget, you will never get a standalone symbol to link back to your brand identity. So what do we do then - just write the name in some funky way? As we debated this issue, it became clear that our company name needs to be treated with respect, reflecting how we want others to see us. Professional, trusted, honest, straightforward - key words we use to describe how we want to be perceived. Inevitably that means the name part of the logo needs to be conventionally presented.

So we need another device to be added. This is what will make our name, simply stated, into a logo. An obvious symbol to use is one that is based upon the P of Prima and the D of Dollar. This reinforces the name but also can stand alone.

As we work through many variations, we also discuss animation. Logos (and device components) are not just static - they can brought alive in presentations - and used in brochures and publications for emphasis.

After these iterations (and quite a few not mentioned here), one clear winner emerged.

We chose a logo that has our company name in caps, with a pair of quotation marks above (the quotation marks are also a "P" and a "D").

Already our presentations are enlivened by animating this symbol - scattering our "PD" quotation marks across the text of our slides, making them rotate, using them as wallpaper. Several different palettes are then also formulated allowing our image to be presented in different ways. Eye-catching. Our logo has also become fun and memorable - although I have now been told off by our marketing guys for bouncing the P and D across the screen from different sides of a slide. Apparently, we do want people to take us seriously.

With the successful relaunch of our business, and now with a new website, new logo, new colour palettes, we are ready to work out what our brand really is about. Of course, most companies start with the brand - but an early stage business has to find its identity first and let the brand evolve. So that is going to be a story for another day.

Let me know what you think of our logo. Have we picked the right one? Are we really orange? The story of building our new website is here: Website story.

An article about how we got our name will follow next ......

Some useful links if you want to think about logos:

• Patrick Hanson-Lowe - CMO, marketing and communications director who managed and drove our process
• gt&i - creative design consultants who did the heavy-lifting for us
• See also this excellent website for further insights and inspiration - ArtLebedev - showing online their process: ArtLebedev Logo Design Stories. Having never done this before, I found this resource very useful.

Please do remember that all the content here (and linked) is the copyright of the various organisations involved.