I need YOUR help to pick a logo

Good Sunday evening, if you’re a paid LNI member! And good Monday morning, if you’re a subscriber! All are welcome, though the early paying bird gets the worm, as they say. Someone said that once, maybe.

At the start of each week, I explain the latest seemingly insurmountable hurdle in starting a video-focused media company. Today’s topic …

We’ve been working hard on coming up with the overall design of LNI for weeks now. So much of that revolves around our logo. This logo represents our entire company! It sets the tone for our silly but serious approach to news. We have to get it right! It shouldn’t be so bad that far-right commentators, with their limited vocabulary, think it’s woke. And it absolutely cannot be as terrible as the new MS NOW logo:

When our designer Sarah Hashemi sent me our final three logo designs to choose from, I had a different type of problem: they’re all so good that I couldn’t pick one. No one at LNI could pick (though we did decide on how to spell Zelenskyy).

Finally, Executive Editor Lauren Saks found a cheat code. No, she didn’t type “rosebud” or “motherlode” into the computer. She just realized I could source my decision-making to you, our LNI members. 

If you’re a paying LNI member, you can vote right here in this newsletter. If you aren’t a paying member and want to vote, you can sign up now! Your welcome email will have the poll. 

To get more context on the logo, let’s go straight to the source! Here’s a Q&A with the logo designer, Sarah Hashemi:

This is a great question because I want the answer as well. No designer/artist/chef/etc. has the same approach and my approach is largely dependent on my environment. What works for me right now while D.C. is under siege is walking out onto my catio (tiny patio almost exclusively used by my two needy cats) with a cup of tea and letting out a guttural scream. This is a half joke. I drink coffee. 

The process and production for coming up with these logo options involved gathering inspiration, researching, sketching, designing in Adobe Illustrator, and removing my pandemic cat, Milo, from my laptop. Have I already started talking about my cats too much?

The branding inspiration for LNI that has definitely bled into the logo is Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Have I Got News For You, and my mother Laurie Tilley. I am a firm believer that nothing is original. We are all deeply inspired by the constant imagery around us. I love to absorb work by really cool designers on Instagram or Behance or in my neighborhood on my Pokémon Go walks. 

There is probably some inspiration in these logos you see that I don’t. Curious. What do you think? Please respond to me by talking at whatever device you’re reading this from. 

There is so much we could dive into around color theory but truly the answer is quite simple. I chose what I liked!

Here they are.

Do you like them? Do you like me? Maybe we should do a poll on that next. 

I am primarily a motion designer and animator who has sort of fallen into branding (I will be stretching my mograph muscles soon for LNI! Stay tuned!). Animation is a time intensive labor. That paired with working in newsrooms for ten years sort of forced me to get comfortable with imperfections and moving forward. With the logo specifically, I showed options to the whole LNI team (except for Lola who I assume didn’t want to deal with senior cat Momo’s death glare) and a decisions could not be made. So alas, here I am writing to you. Asking if you’d help us choose our logo.  

Did you vote? Will you vote? Would you, could you in a car? Would you like green eggs and ham? 

We hope you do. We’ll reveal the winning logo next week! That’s all for now. See you on TikTok, YouTube, Reels, Bluesky, Threads or maybe in a library trying to find a different book for my kid.

-Dave