I cleared off the dining table and set up my laptop and preliminary sketches as I was going to need to spread out a bit. I knew I was going to be working until my eyes crossed, but that was fine. I’d had plenty of jobs just like this one in Boston. The difference, of course, was that when I was working for myself, it was only my reputation on the line. Knowing that my work was reflecting on Vasquez Squared made the stakes feel that much higher.

The old logo was a traditional pretzel outlined in a vintage seventies yellow mustard color that did nothing for the pretzels except keep the design recognizable. I had done a background check on the family and discovered the Schneiders were from the Midwest and the company had been started in the 1800s. There was a lot of family pride in their corporate message but they needed more than that. They needed to catch the eye of the younger generation.

I looked at the layouts we had. I liked them. I liked them a lot. They kept the same vibe of the old company but looked fresher. It occurred to me that one way to kick off the new logo was to let the consumers choose. I checked out the company’s social media and noted that they had a solid presence. This would make my suggestion to take it to the public more viable. Cool.

I took another swing at each of the logos, making them pop. I tweaked the fonts, the size, and the color schemes. The only one I didn’t touch was one that I’d worked on all afternoon, after talking to our client on the phone this afternoon, which was also my favorite. I’d taken the old logo but redrawn the letters so that the S and the P in Schneider Pretzels looked like a tasty pretzel. Then I’d stylized the S and the P so that they were a new logo of intertwined pretzel letters. Hand-drawn on Adobe Illustrator but in white with an aqua background, they popped, which would be particularly important for the thumbnail image on their social media channels.

Of course, this was the resolution of only one of my problems. I still needed to come up with a huge client to impress Miguel and Soph and keep Carson off my back. Damn it. I was brand new to this city. I wasn’t networked or connected to anyone other than the people I worked with. How the hell was I going to pull this off? I had no idea.