360 Creative Vision

If you look atop our website, you’ll see a unique diamond-shaped icon to the left of our organization’s name, and that new brand mark is, well, brand new to us. The name “brand mark,” by the way, is just another fancy way to say “logo,” and we’re really happy to tell you how we came up with the design.

And we say “we,” but what we mean is this: Most of the actual thinking, creativity, tweaking and artistry involved in the evolution of our new brand mark was accomplished by Juli Johnson from 360 Creative Vision, the company behind our new logo.

Most brand marks have an enormous amount of thought behind them and ours is certainly no exception.

Ask Juli and she’ll tell that our co-founders, Zac and Celine Adair, pretty much gave her free rein on the design, telling her they’d really like something that is simple and iconic. But in the same breath, Juli will also tell you that while talking with these two nature lovers, she sensed that both possess a Zen-like, spiritual attitude when it comes to anything that exists in nature.

For instance, Zac told Juli he certainly didn’t expect her to present an obligatory drawing of a pine tree on a hill. Not only would that be a reminder of a car freshener, but it seemed redundant to him in comparison to what the other businesses and organizations similar to The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) were using.

The seeds for Juli’s inspiration in the initial concept included a directional compass to illustrate adventure/outdoors, scaled back and simplified only showing the needle that points north. And an ancient symbol that represents knowledge.

Juli said her first choice was “Enso” — a simple circle shape that represents the Zen Buddhist symbol for enlightenment. In her research of this symbol — or a stylized version of it — Juli found the use of an Enso symbol had already been copyrighted by (more…)