An interview with Jeroen Stolwijk, designer of the Mensa Fonds Logo (“A logo is more than your name in a colour”, see www.droomvorm.nl)
Jeroen Stolwijk, designer of the Mensa Fund logo:
When the Mensa Fund came to me for a logo, we first sat down to determine what the logo should convey. In a conversation you can usually sense what is important and what is not. Especially when you create a logo, clients often come up with wishes such as ‘I want the logo to convey flexibility, and solidity, and cooperation, and reliability, originality, team spirit, independence…’ and a few more of those terms. Sounds interesting, but with a logo you have to try to capture the essence.
Support and stimulates
Fortunately, that was not the case with the Mensa Fund. The idea was clear: the Mensa Fund supports people, stimulates growth and versatility and helps high-flyers to develop. If you reduce that to the essence, you are left with growth and development as the core. I continued with that essence.
During the conversation I had already come up with the idea of highlighting the versatility of the Mensa Fund by creating a colorful logo. I wanted to show the development and growth by bringing movement into the logo. If I could combine those two elements with an image that also showed the ‘high flyers’, I would have a good logo, or so I thought.
Two tracks
And so I started looking for forms. I soon found myself on two tracks. People in motion: linking growth and versatility to the people the fund supports; and Freethinkers, linking growth and movement to the highflyers concept. And so, from the Logo “Freethinkers” based on the two core words, some extra concepts crept in… but this time as useful and welcome support.
Freethinkers
I developed Freethinkers into an image of a flying, rising bird. A bird that indicated movement, the feeling of freedom, overview… and of course a fairly literal translation of highflyers. I envisioned a series of logos here: one color bird for an award, one color for another project, and so on. This logo focused on the achievements of the people that the Mensa Fund would support.
People in motion
I based People in Motion on the shape of a Nautilus shell.
Very beautiful natural shapes, which are the ultimate symbol for growth. A new room is built on such a fantastic shell every time.
And the best part is that this shell also grows in Fibonacci proportions! That does the inner Mensa-member good… I stylized the shapes of the shell into a spiral and combined it with people’s faces. By overlapping them with the spiral in the right way, I got a ‘cornucopia’-like shape with lots of colors and movement.
Our preference
After a test, the Mensa Fund liked the People in Motion version the best.
Well done, it was actually my favorite too. And so we had a beautiful logo for the Mensa Fund! I must say, I’m still very happy with it. It has become a logo with a lot of color and movement, but still with a recognizable, sleek shape. Actually, this applies to both the Mensa Fund and the logo: from the core to something beautiful and complex.