Brand Identity
Deciding our aesthetic.
Welcome back to Àaló.
Now that you are up to speed on who we are, why we are here and how we started, permit me to share the story behind the decision on how we are going to appear to the world.
I met Dr. Olorunfemi during our surgery posting as house officers at FMC, Owo. While he was working on a design, I shared with him what I was working on and how I needed someone to bring the image I had into being.
We started with a brief of what I wanted and what the company is supposed to mean. I shared with him the various notes I had and the little sketches of what I imagined the logo to be like. While I was concerned about creating just a logo, he was more concerned about the other things that went into brand design.
When the first set of designs came through, it was hard to pick out which design I wanted because none of it felt anywhere close to the image I had conjured up. So instead, he asked me to pick out what I liked about the various logos and he was going to find a way to combine the various aspects together.
The first thing I wanted was a moon somewhere in the logo, to serve as an homage to the tales under the moonlight, which Àaló translates to, a nostalgic nod to the nights I spent listening to my grandfather tell stories of Ijapa and Yanibo or to Kola Olawuyi's radio broadcast, Nkan bé.
The second thing that took a lot of back and forth was the brand colour palette. He threw away my initial colour palette, and I, in turn, rejected the ones he came up with (aura for aura), until eventually we arrived at somewhere we were both happy with.
After we were settled on what Àaló was going to look like, design-wise, I asked if he was interested in buying into the company’s dream – he said yes!
