Higher Art Gallery Logo

Higher Art represents a large collection of limited-edition works on paper such as etchings, lithographs and mezzotints, by a prestigious group or international artists, most of whom have works in major museums. We both SELL and RENT artwork from our gallery, the latter mostly to decorate offices, and we want to expand our presence in this market. This logo is part of a major re-design of our web site and launch of our new hire brochure.

http://www.higherart.com.au

While our current logo "Higher Art" OK, it is a text logo and difficult to use as a design feature on our new web site.  What we need is something more visual / graphic oriented that has some pizazz and that will work for both sides or our business.  We do like the font and the colour of our current logo and may continue to use them in some form, depending on whether or not one or both meshes well with the graphic logo we select.

We have a retail gallery space open to the public from Fri-Sun and during the week we cater to the corporate market by offering private showings, hosting events, etc.  Our new web site is going to be more geared towards this corporate market and our hire business, but will still serve for both.  It will contain high quality (web) photographs of the artwork that we have in our inventory so that our clients can use the web site to see what we have, figure out what they like and maybe even select works for their offices or homes.

Our current logo is our name in EnvirSCD (an all-caps font) in a deep & bright red colour (see below for details).  We have a trademark for this text logo.  We have also used several sub-text lines which are printed in the same font.  Our initial sub-text was geared towards the corporate rental market and is "When You Want to Hire Art" (also in EnvirSCD and printed in black).  This text is quite small compared to the name and is nestled in under the name between the right side of the 2nd "H" and the middle of the 2nd "R".  For those of you who are not word smiths, Higher Art is a play on the fact that we "hire" art and also offer art of "higher" quality.

When we opened the retail gallery, we used the sub-text  "Artwork of International Distinction" because we didn't want that market to think we only hired art.  We have also added "gallery" to our name so that people know we are and come in to take a look.  In general advertising, we use "Artwork of International Distinction for Hire or Purchase" as a sub-text.  FYI, for other text printed on busines cards, etc. the font is EnvirD which has both upper and lower case letters.

According to Photoshop, the current red colour has the following RGB/CMYK values:

R = 196, G = 0, B = 12

C = 10%, M = 97%, Y = 98%, K = 2%

As far as ideas concerning what the graphic should be, the only idea we have come up with is pretty corny: that through our international artwork our gallery provides a "window on the world".  A window is also a "frame" and all of our artwork is displayed in frames and behind glass to protect it from dirt, moisture, etc.  so there might be some opportunity to play on this concept. 

You can also think of the gallery or artwork in terms of:

-- expanding peoples horizons;

-- allowing them to step into another world or transporting them to another world;

-- adding international (read: "sophisticated") flavour to their home or office;

-- adding prestige to their home or office;

- A visual / graphic logo with some pizazz that is suitable for our web site and also for brochures, stationary, et al.
- We want to use the same or similar logo for our hire and retail businesses.
- We want something clever:memorable.
- We would prefer to use our current red colour, or incorporating it somehow into the new logo.
- We like the concept of "Higher Art - when you want to hire art" but can't envision how this could be incorporated or expressed in a logo.
- Design in a vector format.

- We don't want something based on our initials -- too forgetable, not visual in the way we want as it could be for any type of business.
- We don't want something corny, folky, etc..