The Green Grocer: logo (part 2)

After discussing the initial ideas with my sister, she wanted to focus on a simple text-based logo that incorporated a food element, like a tomato--cute, colorful, and distinctive. She also gave me a few sites that she liked to give me a sense of her preferred style, and used the words "clean" and "modern." Ok, I said, we can work with that. So here are the variations on the theme that I came up with; I went with the vertical layout because it worked better with the logo shape and information we needed to include:

The Green Grocer: logo (part 1)

My sister and brother-in-law were starting a local/organic/sustainable grocery store up in Windsor, a small town up in wine country (Sonoma county). So for their logo, my first sketches explored the idea of location, of food iconography, and of plants. (See sketches.) Regarding the design process, I always start with pencil on plain white paper, so that I can quickly explore as many ideas as possible without wasting time on paths that turn out to be dead ends. Plus, many more visually talented people than I advocate working with sketches first, computer afterwards--Michael Bierut is just one example.