3 logos I like: Geek Girls Carrots, Moderat, Jadłonomia

1. Geek Girls Carrots

Geek Girls Carrots is an organisation dedicated to connecting, teaching/learning and inspiring women in Tech and IT. Why carrots? Kamila Sidor, the heart and soul of GGC, explains: “Geeks and long-lasting coding are usually associated with pizza and junk food. With carrots we wanted to make sure our community was associated with a healthy lifestyle.” She thinks that girls in general tend to care about their health more than guys. They wanted an English name to open up the possibility of becoming global – which they successfully have.

The first GGC meeting took place in 2011. Now they hold meetings in 22 cities in 7 different countries, inspiring women to learn programming, build working teams and startups, become entrepreneurs, network and have fun. As a result, more and more women are colonizing this masculine industry to the point that journalist Natalie Lekka has even called Poland “the land of ‘IT’ girls, home of ‘she-geeks’”.

The Geek Girls Carrots visual identity consists of a striking logo, that is geeky, fun and very memorable at the same time, the colour – orange, as well as gadgets, and their signature carrot cake. Their promotional materials are always fun and playful, presenting the organisation as a welcoming, safe and exciting environment to be in. These women, some wearing flannel shirts and square glasses, some in miniskirts and heels, break with the stereotypical image of a programmer who communicates in an abstract language non-geeky people won’t understand. They do sports, dancing, baking, travelling and adventure games. Having been to their meetups, I can certify that they’re as friendly and inspiring as they’re presenting themselves through their branding.

1. Moderat

Moderat is a Berlin-based collaboration between Modeselektor (Sebastian Szary and Gernot Bronsert) and Apparat (Sascha Ring), who create soulful dance music, with roots in techno and IDM. Szary says that people get easily bored of listening to very clean electronic music so their is playful, based on re-sampling with the use of analogue gear, and making loops. “It’s like a little domino game, you hit one and they all start falling.” On March 29th 2016 their third album III was released in Germany, following the release of a video to Reminder a month earlier on YouTube. The video and artwork for the album were created in collaboration with their long-term creative partner, Pfadfinderei, a design and motion graphics studio also based in Berlin.

By using a comic-book / gaming and avant-garde aesthetic, Pfadfinderei creates designs which closely accompany and support the music. Its playful, experimental spirit comes across very well in their visual identity. The shape and composition of letters in their logo creates an effect of being drawn into the artwork, as one can get easily drawn into their looping beats.

1. Jadłonomia

Jadłonomia (Foodonomy) is a vegan food blog created by Marta Dymek, which made its way onto the Jason Hunt list of the most influential blogs in 2014. Dymek is also an author of a book (under the same title as the blog), the first two editions of which got sold out immediately, so a new edition got issued.

Dymek, 27 years old, became a vegetarian a decade ago, and she doesn’t use any animal products in her everyday cooking. She doesn’t, however, call herself a vegan because while eating vegan at home, she’s not always able to avoid animal products when she’s travelling. With her inventive recipes which are largely based on local ingredients, she’s determined to prove that Polish cuisine is not limited to meaty dishes, and that a plant-based diet can be exciting and delicious. In the recent years, meat consumption in Poland dropped by 8% so it seems that more and more people share Dymek’s enthusiasm for meat-free cooking.

Until recently, the blog’s visual identity was based on a hand-lettered typeface, but it recently underwent rebranding. Her new logo was designed, like the website, by Emilia Obrzut aka Obszar Roboczy, who commissioned illustrator Magdalena Pankiewicz to draw the beetroot. I think it works very well, emphasising the bespoke, hand-made and soulful nature of the work she does, and the values she stands for.