The Story Behind the Logo

The Backstory

I have recently been through the process of building a logo for Iron Mountain Organics.  I have been a part of the logo creating process three times at the company (ThreeWill) I founded with my brother Danny.  He was the driving force to figure out what would work best since his passion is marketing.  I was definitely involved, but it was Danny who really was in charge (I was more along for the ride and voiced my opinions along the way).

The logo for Iron Mountain Organics was the first logo where I was the primary driver.

BTW – This whole logo design was made possible by my son Alex who pulled together a GoFundMe that allowed me to hire a design professional.

It is an interesting process to determine a logo for your enterprise/mission.  Before I even had my first meeting with the designer, I went through my own process to determine a name for the Market Garden.  I could write a blog just on that, but for now I will just share the note I shared with my family when thinking about what to call the Market Garden

February 16, 2018

Any ideas gang on the name for the business that will sell organic produce in the future? I might go through USDA organic certification or just use organic methods. The current ideas are:
– Iron Mountain Farms [street name and we know a blacksmith that could built things like signs out of iron]
– Liberty Hill Farms [street name]
– New Beginnings Organics [theme of life always has new beginnings, starting over from cancer, starting new business (ThreeWill), starting new farm/garden]
– New Life Organics [healthy vegetables can provide a new and better life for folks]
– Painted Dogwood [was something people have commented on before with our house – there was a dogwood that died and was painted blue in our yard. Seems like an eclectic name.]
– Blue Tree Farms [will need to plant blue spruces that mom likes]
– Blue Spruce Farms [same as above]
– Split Rail Farms [since we want to have a split rail around the house]
– Iron Gate Farms [since we are on Iron Mountain and we could get an iron gate built]
– Orange Gate Farms [since we are Clemson grads, we could paint the gate orange]
– Gray Barn Farms [we liked the ring of this and could build a gray barn]
– Lavender hill Gardens [since we have lavender]

Also you can use Farms, Organics or Gardens interchangeably with the above sample names. Like “Liberty Hill Organics”

This is just a starting point. Anything come to the top for you? Do you have any ideas for a name?

Note that “Iron Mountain Organics” was not even in the list.  It was my son Austin that suggested this variant.

Inputs to the Design Process

What made “Iron Mountain Organics” stick was the combination of the following:

• Iron – Rustic and strength (and my son-in-law Ian is an architectural ironworker)
• Mountain – a destination and place of retreat
• Organics – the desire to grow food as nature intended

Another major factor is this is the name of the road we are on, so that is the key reason why Iron and Mountain are in the name.  Be sure to pick a house on a cool street name if you want that part of the name ;).

Having the name “Iron Mountain Organics” going into the design process, I had to come up with colors, fonts, and sample logos to build my own custom logo.  I was provided a questionnaire to tease out what was needed to start the design process.  Things like what are logos of similar businesses and samples of logos I might see as good starting points.  One of those questions was “What six words best describe the feeling you want your logo to convey?”  I had answered the following:

• Local/Neighborly
• Fresh and in season
• Sustainable
• Working in cooperation with natural systems – no dig, natural lifecycles for pest control
• Rustic (we have an old split rail fence around the property)
• Simplicity

We went through three versions to get there, but it was amazing how good the logos were from the beginning.  I liked all the logos provided, so it was a tough process of elimination to determine which logo was the key direction for the design.

I picked one that was simple and reminded me of brands I respect (like Patagonia).  To show you how close my designer got in the first round and how that evolved, here is the progression of the design

Version 1

Version 2

And the final logo

As you can see, it was a great first version and there were small tweaks that helped nail this final version.  We also decided at the end to create an additional smaller logo that can be used for some branding and especially for social media profiles that require a square or round shape.  That logo became the following logo that was nailed in the first try.

The Rest of the Story

As I had discussions with my wife Linda and brother Danny, the major guiding principals in the final design were: simplicity, having an element of being rustic and getting back to nature.  I think the designs meet those criteria.

You might be asking “why did you pick Know Thy Food as the tagline?”  Well it was the brainchild of Linda.  She brought this up as we were having tea from the porch.  She came up with tagline because she knows how important it is for us to know about the food we put into our bodies (where it comes from and the quality of the food) along with the importance of being connected to nature. She is brilliant and I love the tagline she has created.  It really sets the tone of what Iron Mountain Organics is all about.

I know a logo does not have to last forever, but I am so happy where we landed with this logo.  I think it really speaks to the movement of getting back to nature and being in wonder of what God has gifted us with food and the abundance of variety God has provided.

I hope you found this post helpful.  I searched for posts like this as I was looking to create a name and brand for Iron Mountain Organics.  I hope this is handy for the next entrepreneur that want to create their version of an Iron Mountain Organics logo.

Let me know what you think in the comments.  I would like to know what others have done to determine their logo and timeline.