In the studio this week... A new identity for Cobham Pilates

We've had such a fun month full of designing some really great corporate identities. On Monday I shared with you our new identity for MIB Music Ltd, and today I'd like to show you the new identity for Cobham Pilates.

Donna Portyemour runs Cobham Pilates from a dedicated studio in the town centre. Unlike many other pilates classes, which are run from Church Halls and Reading Rooms, Cobham Pilates has it's own dedicated studio and Donna prides herself on her professionalism. She's learned her craft from one of the best pilates teachers in the world, and she needed an identity that communicated that. We've worked with Donna for several years and designed her website and developed her identity as far as we could within the constraints of the logo that she has at the moment (designed by another company). But, as is the theme at the moment, Donna realised that her current corporate identity wasn't doing her business justice and could be holding her back.

Here's Donna's current logo. 

I have to say, we've always found it quite frustrating to work with because it's just so enormous. The 'cp' shape on the left takes up so much space that to get the words Cobham Pilates legible you end up using half the design space just to fit the logo in. So creating something that was altogether more compact was certainly at the top of my own personal agenda!

Added to that, when we've worked with Donna in the past she has always talked about pilates being about strength, and this doesn't come across in this logo. The font is a bit too hippyish and the shape on the left (apart from being annoying to work with!) is too soft and flowy. So we needed to come up with something that was stronger, appealed to both men and women, and (you guessed it!) looked more professional.

Here's one of our initial concepts.

The colours are much more harmonious. None of that soft blue with harsh black! They work together very well (and psychologically speaking say the right things to her customers as well). The logo itself is much more compact and the fonts suggest strength.

What do you think? After much tweaking with colours we're pretty much back to these original colours and have started work on the website redesign. As soon as that's done you'll be one of the first to know!