Company Name
Socialbee
Brand Strategy
Corporate Identity
Photography
The Challenge
Socialbee is an internet platform that aims to create a sustainable culture of youth volunteering engagement. It focuses on facilitating the building of social relations and communities among the users, aged between 18 to 35 (target audience), who share close interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections.
The Solution
The Socialbee logo was designed by Mrs. Keti Tserovska in 2016. The logo was awarded on several design contests and it was presented on the prestigious conference – The Falling Walls, Berlin, November 2016. However, after identifying the brand mission and vision, a thorough research was done in order to explore the Socialbee competitors. After getting familiar with the company competitors, the main symbols were identified by using their semiotic meaning.
| Symbol | Semiotic meaning and information | Cue |
| Bee | The bee symbolizes community, brightness and personal power. Bees can carry 300 times their weight and never shirk their duty to community contributions. |
You need help communicating with other people. You question if you are aligned with your goals in life. By symbolising the coming of the spring season, bee refers to associations with the desired social change and how the connection between the “earth” and “sky” could be associated with the blended connection between “online” and “face-to-face” communication. |
| Honeycomb | It is literally the place where a bee stores its honey. Symbolically, a bee is a spiritual traveller, honey is spiritual input, thus a honeycomb is symbolically a place in the body where spiritual input can be stored. | The symbol here represents the unification of the social networking users who shares the same interests, mission and goals in order to create a co-working social space where everyone could give their input. |
| Beehive | A beehive is a symbol of the cone with its levels and layers. There is added symbolism created by the fact that as one gather more honey more layers are added to the hive. | A beehive consists of two basic colours – blue and yellow. Blue colour associations refer to: power, calmness, success, trustworthiness, spirituality, femininity, devotion, justice, rationality, contentment, hygiene, authority, dignity, loyalty, wisdom, dependability, constancy, water, sky, peace, purity, holy, confidence, strength and security. |
| Yellow colour | The yellow colour stands for attention and learning as well as being associated with a support when it comes to overcome obstacles. | |
| Balloon | Balloons symbolically represent one of two things. Either they are just another version of the egg. | It has been related with active conversation and a quick share of information and facts. |
Image 1: Start sketching. Source: Socialbee brandbook (2016).
Then, several options were produced by incorporating the same symbols.
Image 2: Come up with several options. Source: Socialbee brandbook (2016).
Once the paper sketch has been done, the corporate designer designed the trademark in Adobe Illustrator by using grid in order to be absolutely precise. Furthermore, the Golden Ration was used here – the ellipses interact between each other by setting an angle of 23.45° which is equal to the Fibonacci number: 1.618 which symbolizes sustainability and perfection.
Image 3: The Golden Ratio. Source: Socialbee brandbook (2016).
However, you can see the final outcome (with grid) bellow:
Image 4: The Socialbee logo (for international usage) in Adobe Illustrator. Source: Socialbee brandbook (2016).
Our graphic designer took into consideration the nature of the selected font and manually set up a visual balance by giving certain space between the letters.
Image 5: The Socialbee logo in Bulgarian language (for domestic usage) in Adobe Illustrator. Source: Socialbee brandbook (2016).
Finally, the corporate designer had to define the logo usage.
Image 6: The Socialbee logo – definition of the colour background and monochrome version. Source: Socialbee brandbook (2016).
To sum up, the Socialbee logo meets all requirements that a powerful logo should reflect: it is a scalable, easy to reproduce, memorable and a distinctive trademark. If it is enlarged, it can be reduced significantly not only in colours but also in black and white so that it can be faxed, photocopied and etc. In addition, the Socialbee corporate mission and values are communicated through a powerful symbolic meaning which is incorporated into the logo by using certain shapes, forms and colours.
