I like to say I started Back40 Design looking out over the back forty (acres) of my house in Prague, Oklahoma. But I really didn’t have 40 acres, I lived in the city. I had a backyard. That backyard did back up to the town rodeo club, so it had that ‘back forty’ feel. And I had recently relocated from New England and I was immediately enamored with cowboys, overall wearin’ town folk and those cute little ‘curly Q’ hay bales in all the fields. A transplanted Yankee starting a web design company – yes, I was suspect.
So the first logo design has the snazzy tag line “A Rural Web Design and Hosting Company” – I’m grateful the company outlasted the tag line.
The second logo design is a tribute to the DIN Schriften font and an altered image of a plow from an old Sears catalog. I actually liked this one a lot. I think it lasted into the Shawnee years (moved Back40 from Prague and rented an office in Shawnee).
The third logo design continued my tribute to DIN Schriften. Ah, what a lovely Germanic font. Note the absence of an icon. We were expanding our services quite a bit at that time. We started a magazine and took on more print and graphic design work. I think the text logo was flexible enough to accommodate our expanding services.
The fourth logo design marks our company’s move in Edmond. And our focus of developing a proprietary CMS product, Javelin. I coupled a swoosh abstract icon with a classic Helvetica font. The icon was actually a mutated shape of Oklahoma. Peyton Hutchison helped me design this icon. She’s now the print project manager for Ackerman McQueen.
The fifth logo design was created by me with guidance of Amy Sharp, a designer here at Back40. I think it’s a keeper. Hiding the bottom edge of the word ‘BACK’ behind an imaginary horizon line helped establish depth – like the word was out back behind the back forty. With a bold combination of letters and numbers, it didn’t need any additional art -hence, no icon. We did add the word ‘Group’ which I think helps communicate that we are a multi-discipline design firm. Adding ‘Group’ also broadcasts our belief in team design environment.