Design a logo for Part Time P&L
a logo project by nyabinghi

Creative brief

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT US:

This is actually a project for a friend. Carole is a stay-at-home mom who does bookkeeping and accounting on a part-time basis a small businesses (QuickBooks accounting, payroll, etc.). I have been trying to convince her to expand this by starting her own business and doing it for a whole bunch of area businesses, and I have a great idea for the name: Part Time P&L. (P&L means Profit and Loss to business owners). I want to give her the logo and the domain name (which I bought -- parttimepandl.com -- sort of tough to type unfortunately) as a gift.

So... you are designing a logo for "Part Time P&L", a one-woman company that does accounting and book keeping for small businesses in New England.

HERE IS WHAT WE NEED:

A logo that we will use on our web site, blog, business cards, and invoices.

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS:

Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees who cannot justify a full-time accounting person, so they hire Part Time P&L to help them out with all their quickbooks, payroll, invoices and accounting needs.

Clients may be design firms, home builders, or other professional services firms.

WE LIKE THESE DESIGNS:

Clean, fresh, hip and fun, but not immature
Professional but not boring or stoic or up-tight

Use of strong colors is OK / encouraged

If Martha Stewart were an accountant, this would be her logo.

QuickBooks is not bad.

We don't want the logo to suggest "Big accounting firm" rather, we want it to suggest a comfortable, friendly, small-business owner "just like me" to our small business clients.

There is probably plenty of opportunity to incorporate financial or math symbols into the logo, but it is not required (e.g. $, %). Other ideas on some themes might be a receipt, or a ledger, or a spreadsheet, or a calculator or a bean counter.

Carole is a big part of the brand, customers love her and she is a happy, friendly, outgoing person who gets along fabulously with the customers. She is in her late 40s / early 50s. It might be fun to incorporate a cartoon character of her in there somewhere, but it is by no means necessary and I'm worried this could undermine the goal to look professional.

She would like the clean "Web 2.0" look, but I don't think she needs to see over-used clichés like reflections.

WE ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE (or we don't want to see) THIS IN OUR DESIGN:

AVOID anything that is cheesy, stodgy or boring