For this project, I struggled trying to find a way to encompass the complexities of PCOS in a simple and useful logo design. Eventually, I landed on a teal Venus (female) symbol surrounded by ten circles, with only one of those circles being filled with pink. The Venus symbol represents the idea of womanhood, since PCOS is an ailment that only affects women. The circles represent ten women, with the pink circle representing the one in ten women that are affected by PCOS. Finally, I chose teal to be the main color in the logo because teal is the color widely used for PCOS awareness and representation.
As far as research goes, I was looking for symbols that practically speak for themselves but are easy to recreate and identify. This is how I landed on the Venus symbol to represent how PCOS affects females. Originally, I was looking at ways to incorporate the silhouette of a woman, but felt that a Venus shape would get the same message across without over-complicating the design as a whole. I already knew from prior background research that PCOS affects 1 in every 10 women, so I chose to include this element as well since it seems so substantial.
When I began sketching my ideas for the logo this morning, I bounced between several ideas. At first, I tried sketching comic versions of a uterus to show that PCOS deals with the reproductive system, but nothing seemed to look or feel quite right with that idea. Next, I started sketching silhouettes to try and communicate a similar message, yet still became frustrated when the sketches turned out too busy or complicated. Finally, I regressed down to the widely known sign for women: Venus. When I first drew the sketch of my now complete logo, I felt that it was lacking some important element. After sitting down on Illustrator to actually create my logo, I realized that what was missing was color and balance (which illustrator will give you when your untrained artistic side will not).
For the actual synthesizing of my logo, I started with a blank web document on illustrator. I used the ellipse tool to create the main circle of the Venus symbol. I wanted the circle to be hollow, so I made the stroke to be 10 pts and left the fill empty. Next, I used the line segment tool to create the vertical and horizontal lines to cross one another and complete the shape of Venus. Once the main focus was established, I created a larger circle temporarily using the ellipse tool and placed this around the main shape. Then, I made a smaller circle and placed this on the temporary circle. I used the rotate tool to help place the same circle every 36 degrees since I wanted a total of ten circles. Once my circles were all placed, I made sure they each had a consistent stroke of 4 pts so that they weren’t too thick. Next, I deleted the temporary circle I had used for a guide and was left with a circle made of circles surrounding my main shape. Finally, I made the stroke and fill of one circle into a high-contrasting light pink.
Surprisingly, I didn’t face too many challenges with this logo project once I got past the concept stage. Coming up with an idea (even this simple) proved to be difficult for me, but I actually had fun bringing my sketch to life once I got onto illustrator.
Lauren Green 
In all honesty, I feel pretty good about my logo design draft as a whole. It turned out exactly how I wanted it and I think the simplicity of the design paired with the meaning behind it works out to be a nice logo overall. As far as improvements go, I’ve been told that incorporating some sort of text involving PCOS would help the audience to better grasp what the logo represents since it isn’t remarkably apparent that it’s supposed to represent PCOS specifically. It may take a while for me to find a place where the text doesn’t negatively affect the scalability or unity of my logo, but I do think that this would be a smart addition to the logo if I’m able to find the right font and placement. Additionally, I’ve been thinking of helping the scalability even further by increasing the stroke of all aspects in the logo. Increasing the stroke size would make the logo less intricate overall and would probably be better for small sized versions of what I’ve created. One suggestion that I really enjoy is the idea of filling in the turquoise circles with color as well to make the logo seem more complete overall. Additionally, I plan on centering my logo on the white background because in all honesty, I forgot to the first time around. I look forward to producing a final product that I can have even more pride in.
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This logo looks great and has lots of great meaning that’s expressed in the image. I like the use of the circles to represent women with the one being filled in to represent those affected. I also like the placement of the filled in circle. It is located in a place that catches your eye but doesn’t take away from the rest of the image. Placing the filled in circle on the left of the image instead of directly on the top or bottom helps illustrate the idea that one out of ten is part of the message being delivered and not just a design aspect alone. You may try adding some text to the image because until the logo is widely known people will likely not understand the meaning or message. You may also want to center the logo on the white background so that it looks centered and professional.
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Lauren,
I really like this logo and believe it looks almost professionally done. I really love the way that it is very easy to recognize and incorporates many design elements. First, the colors were well chosen, and I believe complement each other very well. The dots surrounding the symbol create for a great level of symmetry and speak to the important message of the logo itself. My main suggestions would be to thicken up the symbol itself, in my opinion, this would make the logo look much more complete. I would also consider filling in the blue circles with the color blue but keep the one circle pink. I think this would look much better and still translate the message. Besides those, the logo looks very professional and complete. Good luck with the final touches.
-Hunter
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Hello Lauren, this is Tyler Smith a peer in your com210 class. First off I would like to say that I very much like the Logo you have created. After reading about your subject I realized that creating an actual logo for your topic would be creatively challenging, but I think you did a good job of it. I also appreciated the Venus symbol as the ailment only effects women. That being said there is a number of things you can improve upon. I think that you should incorporate the letters PCOS somehow into the symbol. Perhaps somehow incorporating the O into the circle or something of that nature. That way the viewer better knows what the symbol stands for. I would also encourage you to increase the stoke size of the circles and the symbol in order to decrease the negative space. Other than that, I think you have a solid design and I can’t wait to see what the final looks like!
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Lauren, your logo is super well designed, and you explained it’s meaning very well. The Venus is instantly recognizable, which makes the core part of your logo’s design very strong, and the circles surrounding it representing the 1/10 women thing is really well done. The only thing I’d change is maybe add some words or something to help identify PCOS for people who don’t know what it is, as the logo may be confusing if you don’t know. That being said, I don’t know what the logo is for, so text may not be necessary. I don’t really have anything else to add, as you did a really good job. You clearly know how to use illustrator pretty well and have an understanding for graphic design. I need 23 more words to hit the 150 word minimum, so once again really good job and keep up the good work!
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