Setting out to come up with the logo for Technori, we wanted something that could stand alone as a symbol. Something that would look good both online and in print, it needed to be able to shrink or be blown up 10 ft tall, and it needed to be versatile enough that only seeing one piece of it was enough to recognize it.
In addition, we needed a logo that truly stood for something. We have large aspirations for Technori and the logo had to portray that same vision. Something cutting edge, but solid & resolute. Lastly, it had to distinctly represent Chicago and ideally it would be recognizable almost instantly by most Chicago natives.
Setting out we started to play off the name Technori with different concepts based around sushi. For those who aren’t familiar with the term “Nori”, it’s flat sheets of seaweed commonly used to make Maki-Sushi rolls. (It’s actually made out of red-algae, by the way).
So, if Technori was going to wrap up Chicago entrepreneur community into “bite size” pieces of journalism and post them one at a time on our site, we thought what better than using sushi symbols in our logo.
First we started by trying to make certain letters in the logo out of sushi rolls. Not only did it make it unreadable, but it looked more like a restaurant logo than a business publication. Having wasted about six hours of time on those logos we ended up scrapping, we went back to the drawing board and decided Technori would be better served with a stand-alone symbol instead.
Thinking about what the most famous “sushi-roll like thing” was in Chicago led us through a few different ideas. The Willis (Sears) Tower had too many edges. “The Bean” looked more like a green burrito than a roll. We couldn’t figure out how to make deep-dish pizza, Wrigley Field, or shady politics into a roll shape.
The final result is an artistic interpration of a blend of iconic Chicago skyscrapers into a single tower that resembles several of Chicago's famous buildings.
The logo was designed by our in-house designer Kevin Lucius who was tasked with this unique challenge. “I never thought I would have to draw a giant sushi building”, said Kevin. “The criss-crosses of the building were a little tricky but in the end I'm very happy with how it turned out.”
We hope you love it as much as we do.