Hi Everyone!

Thanks so much for the initial designs! They are making me realize that I need to provide you with more information.

1) SEL stands for social emotional learning. This refers to how self aware we are, how good we are at self management (organization skills, impulse control, for example), how socially aware we are (how do we show up and see ourselves and others in social situations), how good we are at building relationships and how inclusive we are in our decision-making processes.

2) In the U.S., SEL typically focuses on children; developing the above skills in children. Our work, however, starts by saying "we can't expect adults who are not supported to develop their own SEL skills to somehow develop those same skills in children." So, as far as the logo goes, we're really focusing on the idea of a school leader or, at least, an adult who works at a school with developing their own SEL skills. This is extremely PERSONAL and vulnerable work. As such, it may be worth exploring ideas related to safety or growth or reflection.

3) By definition, our work deals with emotions. As such, exploring ideas that have to do with emotion, a range of emotions, the ups and downs that are part of every school day, the idea of resilience and/or persistence may also be good directions to go. This may mean that the winning logo ends up being a lot more abstract.

4) We very much like logos, such as the FedEx logo, that use negative space in a creative way. Please feel free to explore that concept as you see fit.

5) Regarding color, as we mention in the brief, you are welcome to use or include the colors the publisher chose for our book. However, because of items 2 and 3, in particular above, you should feel free to explore other colorways. Our only requirement is that there has to be a very good design rationale for your color choice; please do not randomly select your colors. Fortunately, since emotion and color are so closely connected, this should not be too, too challenging to do.

6) Educators (the school leaders and adults in schools that we serve) tend to be very skeptical of more corporate treatments. The logo should not look like it could hang on a law office or a more traditional, corporate work space. Education is about power, growth, impact, collaboration, exploration, change. All of these ideas may also provide you with interesting paths to explore.

Please do not hesitate to ask questions here if you have any, and thank you so much for your work!

Randy

Hi!
After reviewing everyone's submissions, I can also add that we should try to stay away from traditional education symbols like mortarboards and apples. I appreciate the ideas, but unfortunately many other educational businesses use those symbols and we'd like to try to stand out.

I should also note that we are very different from our competition in that we focus on adults' SEL skills first AND that we specifically design our work to fit into school leaders' very busy and stressful days. In our book, each daily prompt is less than 400 words and takes no more than five minutes. So, there might also be something worth exploring in terms of taking consistent small steps or doing a little bit each day.

Thank you so much!

Hi again!

One of the designers just let me know that it is more helpful to you to eliminate a design rather than provide a low star rating. I'm happy to do this and my intention was only to provide you with feedback, not to impact your rating on the platform. I didn't realize that my star ranking were used for anything other than trying to help you understand where we're trying to go.

Thanks again!

Looking forward to your feedback to my design submitted as #27999780. Thanks

Hi Everyone!

Thanks so much for your efforts. Here are some additional thoughts based upon the work I'm seeing.
*Let's change "The Daily SEL Leader" to "Daily SEL Leader"
*Let's focus on designs that separate the mark from the text. So, let's stay away from badges, for example.
*I'd like to see some concepts for the mark only that both reflect the brief and the other notes I've shared here on the message board in the form of a four-strand helix
*I think I'm leaning towards San Serif fonts only. Please explore that space.

Thank you so much!