Sam posted about the new Jive logo a couple of weeks ago. I promised myself I’d post something more in depth but let myself forget about it. Then I saw this post over at 37signals and it reminded me how much I love how-they-did-its.

Sam’s already done a great job of explaining why we went with a new logo:

The “Bullhorn” didn’t represent collaboration as much as it did an individual voice. And it certainly didn’t match the new product logos and corporate identity. We hired a designer to help us back then but it didn’t result in anything we loved. It was just a painful experience and we decided to table it and concentrate on Clearspace. That behind us now, we embarced on re-addressing Jive’s logo a few months ago.

I’d like to add that the timing was great. We were already consdiering a new website, new marketing materials and even possibly a new booth. If we were going to change the logo it was sort of now or never.

We immediately went to Raja. He was a complete rockstar on several of our current product and website logos, including Clearspace and Ignite Realtime. Raja brought along Mike Erickson to help us out. At the beginning the one thing that was clear was that we really wanted to focus on a text-only treatment. We wanted to let the products retain the more icon-like marks and to make Jive more of an all encompassing emblem. We also suggested that it might be good to remove Software from the logo. Everyone refers to us as Jive. We call ourselves Jive. Why bang it over everyone’s heads that we create software?

Raja and Mike immediately began taking stabs at it. Our first direction was more of a take on “infinite unity” with a few simpler take on a stylized Jive inside a container.

This one we really liked at first but but never could get past the sporty, Nike-ness of it.

There were a few that were interesting but perhaps a bit too bizarre and others that just didn’t make the cut:

We saw a ton of options:

Eventually we saw something with some potential. It was a bit too whimsical at first, but Raja and Mike had stumbled upon something we really liked. We loved the flow of the inner line, how it created the dots for the J and I. We also liked the dimension created because the line didn’t cut completely through the V. Almost like whatever was cutting the logo apart was going behind it.

We went through several variations, until after a late night I stumbled into this idea. It had the feel that we wanted. Large, bold, concrete, energetic, and with the right balance of enterprise-class business and hip technology company.

Of course just because I was close didn’t mean we were there yet. Raja and Mike spent plenty of time correcting the kerning and letter weight. We explored a multitude of different typefaces until we had altered things so much it was pretty much our own. We bounced ideas around internally, sometimes quite heatedly. John (dude, get a blog already!) pointed out that the swoop was a bit too much of a “comet” crashing down to the ground. To emphasize growth he flipped that frown upside down, which made a subtle but quite impactful difference.

Color was a particularly hard decision for me. I really loved the green and blue. In the end I finally relented when I realized my feelings were more ego-driven than logical. Finally we decided on what we have today. A logo that looks great on pretty much any color background you throw at it. Its an equal balance of sophistication and energy with a tone that speaks to both business and technology.

I’m incredibly proud of all the work we did. Huge thanks to everyone who helped. So far it has been a huge success. I’ve been surprised at how quickly it has been adopted and its finally starting to feel like us again.

If you’re still reading then you might be interested in a little pixel-love I eeked out for the unveiling of the new logo. It’s a Jive wallpaper at 1600x1200. Enjoy!