The Apprentice logo challenge - s18 ep8
22nd March 2024
posted 22nd March 2024
We tuned in to The Apprentice episode 8 on Thursday night for another branding task. We've assembled our design team for a re-design challenge!
In this blog, we'll look at the logos from The Apprentice Series 18, episode 8. We'll analyse both the team's logos from the episode, giving the pros and cons of each design. Our designers will then take on the challenge of redesigning them. We appreciate that designing under a short time scale isn't easy - so, we've set ourselves a similar time frame.
The Task
This week's challenge was to launch a new electric vehicle, the XBUS. There were two XBUS models, one for leisure and another for business. Each team had to create a brand logo and advertising campaign. They then had to pitch their idea to industry experts. Lord Alan Sugar would then decide who was the winning team.
Logo 1 - Team Nexus
In this week's task, team Nexus were given the leisure vehicle to brand. The team created the idea of 'eBnB', a luxury camping vehicle targeted at 18-25-year-olds. Focusing on bringing the luxuries of home to the outdoors.
For the logo, they created a hexagon-shaped badge design. They chose a serif font for the text of the logo and paired this with a blue, purple, and pink gradient colour scheme. For the icon, they created an abstract shape.
Image: Team Nexus design for 'eBnB'.
Text: Focusing on the text, the team chose a Serif font. Serif fonts can evoke feelings of reliability, trust, and dependability. This is perfect for e-vehicles as there are doubts about their reliability and range. The serif font gives you the impression that it would be safe and dependable to travel in. It's not a bad choice for the logo. However, it is a little plain in design and paired with the colour, it looks a little clinical.
Tagline: The team discussed a tagline but chose not to use one for the final logo. Having a tagline would have helped anchor the meaning of the logo. There was confusion as to what the logo was for. Having a tagline could have helped link it to e-vehicles.
Colour: For the colour scheme, they chose blue, purple, and pink. Blue is a colour that gives connotations of trust, tranquillity, and peace. The use of purple evokes feelings of sophistication, luxury, and spirituality. The choice of pink is feminine, soft, and sweet. The three colours combined in a gradient gives an overall soft, relaxing, and soothing appearance to the logo design. This would be more suited to a hotel or spa than an outdoor camper van. There were also comments in the board room that it looked like a logo for a care home or assisted living. The colour scheme had a huge part to play in that assumption.
Icon: The icon is an abstract flowing shape. In the episode, they explained it as a Tent linked to an 'e' which curls off into a tyre. With the shape being so flowing and abstract, all these elements are hard to see. If you didn't know what they were you wouldn't see them. The icon didn't add anything to the brand message, instead, it created confusion.
Overall, design-wise, it's not that bad for an Apprentice logo. However, for its intended purpose it's not very suitable. Instead of luxury camping, and an outdoorsy feel, you get connotations of femininity and spas.
Webfactory's take on Logo 1
For Webfactory's quick take on Team Nexus's logo, we've focused on the outdoors and nature aspects of the Vehicle. The design is rustic, giving the feeling of adventure, the outdoors and being on the road.
Image: Webfactory's take on eBnB.
The simplicity of the design, font and colour palette helps give a fashionable and luxurious feel to the design. Mixing the two styles of rustic and luxury helps make the brand not too serious. With the target audience being 18-25 year olds, the brand shouldn't feel too expensive and out of reach for that age group.
Using a slab serif font for the company name gives the logo a strong solid base. This font choice gives an impression of reliability and comfort to the brand.
The icon in the design encapsulates all of nature, the oceans, mountains, and forests. By travelling sustainably, you're helping the environment and all these beautiful landscapes. It also represents the freedom with E B&B - there are no limits to where your holiday can take you.
For the colour palette, dark green and gold always complement each other well. The green symbolises the outdoors and nature. The use of gold gives a luxury feel to the brand. Giving warmth and comfort to the design, emphasising what is provided with the camper van.
Logo 2 - Team Supereem
In this week's task, team Supereem were given the business vehicle to brand. The team created the idea of 'Voltz'. A travelling pop-up shop, bringing the businesses to you instead of ordering online. They wanted to create something trendy and fun.
For the logo, the team opted for a wordmark logo design. They used a hand-drawn style font for both the name and tagline. They paired this with yellow and green with a small hint of orange.
Image: Team Supereem's design for 'Voltz'.
Text: The use of hand-drawn style font gives connotations of friendliness and happiness. The relaxed style is approachable and gives an organic feel to the logo. When thinking within the context of electric vehicles and technology, this isn't the most suitable choice. It doesn't give the impression of cutting-edge technology or enhancing your business. It lacks the impression of trust and dependability which businesses would want to feel when making a big purchase.
Tagline: The team opted for a tagline. This helped anchor the meaning of the logo design. It was easier to tell what the logo design was for compared to Team Nexus. The tagline helps give the impression that choosing Voltz will help your business become sustainable. Unfortunately, with the brand name being so short and the tagline being long, the size of the font is quite small. This makes it hard to see when scaled to a smaller size and throws the Balance of the logo off. With 'Voltz' being so large for the tagline to fit underneath, the word 'Voltz' looks shouty.
Colour: For the colour scheme, they chose yellow, green, and orange. The colour yellow gives connotations of positivity, happiness, and energy. The use of green gives the impression of freshness, organic and earth. Orange is a confident, strong, and energetic colour. The colours picked look like primary and secondary tones. Combined with the font style, it amplifies the childish connotations of the design.
Icon: The team chose not to use an icon. Instead, they chose to add a decorative element to the brand name, by connecting the V to the Z. Connecting these two letters creates an interesting shape. From a distance, this can look like a mathematical symbol for a root. This design feature doesn't add to the overall message of the brand and is visually confusing.
In conclusion, the overall design was poor. The combination of colours and the choice of font created an overall childlike appearance. Nothing pieced together or matched well. This would have been more suitable for organic food, kids' food, or farming. Other than the tagline anchoring meaning, nothing suggests it's a logo for an electric business vehicle.
Webfactory's take on Logo 2
For Webfactory's quick take on Team Supereem's logo, we focused on the trendy and fun aspect of the brand.
For the font, we used a sleek, Sans-serif style. Sans serif fonts are contemporary, modern, and approachable but also give a professional image. The rounded edges of the typeface give a friendly feel to the design. This helps give a "tech company" vibe that makes it suitable for the E-van industry.
The icon uses the letter 'V' from the company name to form a zig-zag shape reminiscent of a winding road. This ties the iconography to the transportation aspect of the business. The shape also resembles a 'bolt', alluding to the electric-powered, renewable energy source used in the vehicles.
The company branding uses a blue colour scheme to convey a sense of trust and loyalty, both of which are important characteristics for a business. The bright blue tone adds a fun and lively vibe to the brand, evoking images of the sky or ocean. This helps highlight the company's eco-friendly side. The darker navy shade helps add some seriousness to the logo, giving it a corporate feel. The dark colour compliments the brighter hues adding a strong contrast to the logo.
Learn more
If you are interested in logo design, you can learn more about how to create the perfect logo for your business in our article here.