Competition design: BLC

I had to make a logo design for a competition for a student learning based site; BLC, Blended Learning Consortium.
To start off I had to research key aspects of what to do, taken from their letter, this includes them being online, interactive learning, for students, exploring, sharing knowledge, education etc.
To start off I began to think what other things are linked to some of the key words such as online; internet, students; college and school, education; path to the future/jobs, sharing knowledge; teamwork etc. also looking up the images that are linked to these.

I started to focus the idea of paths at first, linking that to a circuit board with it being connected and having many different paths on it. But I also thought of the idea of team work and working together and thought the logo could include a shape of two hands shaking or touching each other with the element of a circuit board within it.

Leaving the main picture logo for a bit I decided to see if i could develop the letters BLC into the logo by shaping it differently to match its theme of education and being online. I tried many fonts, including the bauhaus font to try and give it a professional look, but overall I decided not to use the letters and started to develop the picture side of it instead.

With the start of the logo,  made a simple blue circle with the pattern and detail of a circuit board on it in white. Though I couldn't think how I could develop further in this way, so instead I made the shapes of hands on either side of the circle in a digital, circuit shape looking style.

This went through a lot of development and stages as I tried different colours, it being transparent, thin or thick outlines, having the text at the top of it etc. I changed the hands that were going towards each other into them touching, breaking the line barrier in-between them, this also went through a lot of stages of changing the colour pallets, how many colours there should be, outlines, making the circle bigger and smaller, a lot of development.

Still going through development, I thought of changing the angle, trying out if it could be at a different side or having it lean to the side instead. Once I did this it appealed greatly to me and I developed it more with different colours, trying different shapes, having more lines, them sticking out and being longer or shorter etc.
I tried out having a black outline that was spaced around it and debating if there should be more than one, if the lines are going to touch it, would the name be by it, inside the outline, around it etc.

I thought of making a signature of the words BLC and tried multiple styles of signatures to make it suit the logo, but this proved to be difficult and I scrapped the idea of adding a signature.

Coming to the final stage of the logo development for the competition, I put the most appealing finished logos with different colours pallets through different stages, that I was happy and confident with, of development into a file to send to the site to judge. I placed quite a few in the file since I couldn't really decide on just a few and I wanted them to see the different kinds of looks it has that could be used.