For the past few weeks we’ve been rummaging around in our archives, trying to figure out which logo was the very first logo created under our corporate banner back in ‘96 (while I have design work that goes back further than ‘96, that year marked the ‘official’ launch of The Logo Factory and the creation of our online studio). It took some time (ten years worth of design makes an awfully big archive) but we figured out that the mark created for the Burbank, California based Black Knight Drum Corp (above) was the very first logo. Evah. Not only that, but it was this project that nudged me into developing what would become one of the first (if not the first) online logo design studio. Before TLF was launched, I was a humble freelance designer, and was an early adapter of the then new-fangled thing called the Internet (or World Wide Web). I had set up a hodge-podge personal portfolio site, showcasing a variety of my design work, with a large gallery of business logos and brand development examples. The folks at BK had run into my site (through a search on the now defunct InfoSeek search engine), liked what I had done, and sent me off an e-mail – “how much would you charge to design a logo for our drum corp?”. To be honest, I had no idea. I hadn’t even thought of utilizing the web as a ’storefront’ and 
and only ever seen my web site as anything but a logo design portfolio piece.
The Black Knight project made me realize that I could communicate with remote clients, work on their projects and deliver the final file formats via the Internet. Without ever meeting face-to-face. From that point on, I developed what was to become the first version of our business model and the beginnings of The Logo Factory. In those days we didn’t have online forms, payment and most people were browsing on 28k dialup modems (hell on a graphically intensive web site) but we still managed to cobble together a fairly decent studio, design team and delivery system. I also remember this project well – frustrated with a lack of reference material (the Internet was not the resource it is today) I pinched a toy knight from my son’s medieval playset and worked with it to create what I think is a fairly nifty helmet. The main font is Industrial (warped through a neat, but now obsolete, Illustrator plug-in called Vector-Fx) while Bank Gothic – a font that’s been done to death – makes up the tagline. I think the logo’s held up pretty well over the years.
And the Black Knights? Oh, they’re still around, and still using the logo (apparently the colors have changed at some point) which can be seen on their web site here…
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