Our first logo

The logo that launched The Factory

The first logo we ever designed by The Logo Factory? That honor goes to the logo design created for the Burbank, California based Black Knight Drum Corp. This was the project that nudged TLF founder Steve Douglas into developing what would become one of the first (if not the first) online logo design studios back in 1996. Pete Ellison, director of the Black Knights had run into Douglas’ personal portfolio website (the precursor site to TLF) through a search on the now defunct InfoSeek search engine).

Pete liked what Steve had done with other company logos, and sent off an e-mail – “how much would you charge to design a logo for our drum corp?” That simple request made Douglas realize that he could communicate with remote clients, work on their projects and even deliver the final logo file formats via the Internet, without ever meeting face-to-face. He went on to develop what was to become the first version of our business model and the beginnings of The Logo Factory.

Douglas remembers this project well – frustrated with a lack of reference material (the Internet was not the resource it is today) he pinched a toy knight from his son Matthew’s medieval castle play set and worked with it to create the helmet icon. The main font is Industrial (warped through a neat, but now obsolete, Illustrator plug-in called Vector-Fx) while Bank Gothic – a typeface that’s now been done to death – makes up the tagline.

We think the logo’s held up pretty well over the years. As did the Black Knight Drum Corps. themselves:

Alas, in 2007 the Black Knights Drum Corp produced their last show and disbanded shortly afterwards, taking a little bit of our history with them. You can still visit the ‘Corps’ website for their full story.