For this project, the goal was to meet all of the client’s needs with a brand identity that would balance fun and serious. Jazz is an inherently energetic genre, and this brand identity is built around that energy, using bright colors to catch attention and abstract shapes to imply motion, as if the logo itself is dancing. The shapes in the logo are an abstraction of the valves on a brass instrument, the core of New Orleans Jazz.

The project started with research, covering the history of New Orleans and the jazz style that was developed there, as well as the history of the CPCC Nola Brass band and visual style inspirations that the client brought up during the initial interview. During initial ideation, I used quick thumbnail sketches to explore different ideas for the logo’s concept, from wordmarks to iconography.

Because jazz is such a lively, abstract style of music, and because New Orleans jazz is so centered around brass instruments, I decided to go in a direction based on an abstraction of trumpet valves, with geometric shapes that were simple and clean while still staying lively and interesting.

The final logo proposed featured variations of the logo with different options for the colors and alignment so it could be used in a variety of contexts.