Good Life Highway is a YouTube channel and lifestyle blog dedicated to full-time RV living, started in late 2019. The contributors, both retired winery owners, are especially enthusiastic about touring wineries, breweries, and distilleries, and pride themselves on their exploration of out-of-the-way places.
I was brought onto this project by Caroline Schaefer-Hills, a graphic designer and video production artist based in Leelanau County, MI. Caroline art-directed this project, and was especially helpful in developing the hand-lettered logotype. I was responsible for drawing and refining all the elements seen here, and also handled some of the conceptual development of the icon and auxiliary/supporting objects “on wheels” (which were not ultimately used).
Since the brief for this project was fairly minimal, I went through extensive moodboarding and mind-mapping exercises, stopping at several points along the way to make sure we had interim buy-in from the client. Some common themes which arose were state/national park aesthetics, outdoor recreation and exploration, vintage roadside pylon signs, and the idea of different kinds of things “on wheels.” The logo was initially conceived as something that would be animated; we explored the idea of swapping between several different wheeled objects, as can be seen below. The hand-drawn type, also shown below, had the client’s full blessing from a very early stage.
It became clear that the animations would need to resolve to a consistent, static symbol, which could also “fly solo” in non-digital applications. I proposed the house with wheels as an encapsulation of being “at home on the road.” The other objects were very fun and complementary, but didn’t paint the full picture on their own. This is what would develop into the main symbol.
Once the final vehicle/house illustration was refined and digitized, an alternate “reversed” version needed to be created for light-on-dark applications. For all versions, the edges were left a little rough to make the mark feel playful, and to complement the illustrated typography. We explored a lot of different color combinations, but ultimately went with something that felt fairly subdued.
As mentioned above, the original project brief called for an animated introduction which incorporated the logo, but complications from the Coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 required the project to be scaled back somewhat.
