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The Climb

Right, Up, Right, Up

Kenneth wearing the Climb Mark tee in sage, white climb mark on the left chest.

I was brainstorming what kind of logo I wanted for Life's Level Up and was coming up with ideas that were too gaming related. I had ideas of showing a sign of actually leveling up like an experience bar but what I am trying to create I don't want limited to one genre like gaming. I came up with some other ideas but they seemed too corporate or techy. I wanted a logo that wasn't too complicated and would be easily recognizable, most of the great logos are simplistic.

I started thinking about how the journey I am on is climbing my way up from hitting my bottom. I played around with some arrows pointing up but they didn't quite feel right, in my mind working with a vertical arrow as the center didn't represent a climb. In hindsight I believe some of the recovery work I did had me leaning towards stairs, sayings like "one step at a time". Stairs finally came to mind so I started playing with a simple set of stairs just right, up, right, up and so on. I wanted to portray what the brand is really about which is continuously improving and growing, still climbing. That led to the arrow at the top of the stairs and I almost stopped there but it needed a little more to feel complete, it didn't feel balanced yet. That is where the left part of the logo comes in, it represents the L in Life's Level Up, but also represents me hitting my bottom before the climb.

The main versions of the logo are simple white or black. My website runs dark, so the mark had to work in white on black first, and it does, that's the version on everything. For the site itself I chose the mint green because it looked great with the dark background and felt fresh and alive, not corporate. I learned in a graphic design course that greens read as growth and renewal, the exact thing I'd picked it for by feel.

What really landed for me was wearing it on my t-shirt. I tried some t-shirt designs earlier on in my climb and looking back at them they were pretty chaotic. The logo I chose for Life's Level Up represents where I am now, it's more clean, simple, and it continues on.

Still climbing.

Still leveling up.