Design — Logo for iRUN

An upcoming solo running event needed a logo and I had less than 24 hours only to come up with one. ‘Unstated requirements’ included a connection to technology and sports. The name ‘iRUN’ was chosen for the event.

Exactly a decade ago, I designed the logo and posters for ‘Science and Technology Run’ (stylized as ‘Snt run’) at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. I wanted to take the same inspiration of ‘race tracks in a stadium’ for the ‘iRUN’ logo design as well.

Race Tracks

A Cute Robot with a Fitness Band

To add more resemblance to a fitness band, three arcs are also added to represent a signal transmission. The robot’s facial outline also resembled the shape that we arrived at, sealing the connection to technology. I named this version as ‘Tech-loop’ logo.

The Logotype

When searching for ‘Tech’ fonts in Google Fonts website, I came across ‘Share Tech Mono.’ When written in this font, the alphabets ‘i’ and ‘U’ of iRUN attracted my attention. To me, the alphabet ‘i’ looked like a person kneeling and the alphabet ‘U’ resembled the shape of a race track. The font is a condensed, tall one that works best even if we apply a ‘faux italic’ treatment.

1. This is how ‘iRUN’ appears in default in ‘Share Tech Mono’ font.
2. The kneeling person ‘i’ of ‘iRUN’ is mirrored. Let us make him/her moving in a positive direction (left to right).
3. The kneeling person ‘i’ is trimmed of the legs! Now ‘i’ looks like a standing person.
4. The alphabet ‘N’ is replaced with a 180 degrees rotated ‘U.’ This is the other half of the shape of race track.
5. Corrected the baseline of the new ‘N.’ then a ‘faux italic’ treatment is done by distorting ‘iRUN’ to some 10 degrees from the vertical. This is to represent a positive movement from left to right.

iRUN Logo

Within the available time-frame of a single day, I believe that this is the best result one could achieve. The event is planned in September 2020. Marketing collateral and merchandise design will all feature this iRUN logo.