Spot Bagel Identity Case Study

• In some ways, the concept of Spot Bagel had the cards stacked in its favor. The owner of the bagel company had previously owned a bagel company up in Seattle called Spot Bagel Bakery years ago, which featured a Dalmatian as it’s mascot, albeit in a more 90s cartoon manner. But I took the name Spot Bagel at face value and decided to play with it a little, exploring the different ways it could be interpreted.

  Spot bagel, because of it’s name, lended itself to more graphic treatments and design for the logo. Circle, dots, and various different bold treatments all came to mind with the name Spot. Sure it could invoke a dog named spot, or Dalmatians, but it could also be the spot on the map of good taste, or trying to find the perfect spot. So many connotations in a simple name.

  

  The first exploration I did was the idea of trying to locate the perfect spot. Spot bagel works as verb as well as an noun, and the call to action that an arrow invokes seemed like a good concept for a new company that didn’t have much name recognition in San Francisco.

  

  Illustrating the bagel itself, I started to play with the idea that maybe the bagel needed to be included in the logo. From a simple grid system, with the diagonal line (a vague reference to the fact that San Francisco’s main street, Market Street, runs diagonally through the city) to the more simple use of the illustrated bagel with the type treatment, were explored.

  

  Early variants of the dog concept for Spot Bagel used both the dog tag shape as well as the whole dog.

  

  Working with the Dalmatian, I started to explore the idea of creating a logo with the graphic dog reversed out of a color box. Already the logo was standing out as something different from the other logos as punchy and bold. The client immediately gravitated toward this logo, and I started to refine it, trying to figure out how to make it less fussy and less like a logo for a vet or pet store, more a logo for a bakery.

  

  The introduction of a bagel halo, helped to bring in the idea that this was a bakery logo, and not a pet store or veterinarian clinic. A type exploration found a basic type face that showed the artisan crafted feel that the client wanted to convey with the logo. Custom refinements and the hiring of an illustrator lead to the final logo below.

  

  That’s the complete case study for creating a logo. Click back to see the initial comps for the Belle’s Bagel concept and the Secret Bagel concept which were also concepts for the artisan bagel company or feel free to explore how I applied the logo to signage, packaging and other applications.

  
  

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• Spot Bagel Logo Case Study

  

• Spot Bagel Application