Featured Design Contest: Crooked Acres Lavender Farm – Lavender Farm Logo

Today’s featured design contest was done for Crooked Acres Lavender Farm, a small boutique lavender farm that creates handmade products and provides small group eco-tourism experiences for their customers. They offered a prize of $50, and received 77 entries. It’s a great example of a client getting a fantastic logo design without breaking the bank.

What the Client Asked For

The design brief for this contest didn’t go into a lot of detail. They didn’t ask for any particular colors, and they had no specific requests. However, they list some possible ideas such as rolling hills, lavender flowers, farm equipment, bees, or essential oils. Ultimately though, they were unsure exactly what they wanted, and were open to seeing what the designers could come up with.

Here are some of the designs that were submitted, with the winning design at the end.

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#10

This design utilized a color scheme of green, pink and yellow. The rolling hills and fields with a tractor are seen through a raindrop shape, framed by lavender flowers and a bee, with the farm name underneath. It’s a busy scene, but it does include almost every element the client suggested, minus the essential oils. 

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#9

It’s interesting to note that with this contest, although there were several different designers participating, the vast majority of submissions ended up being a circular shape or icon formatted over the farm name. This design was no exception, although it was one of the few that utilized a color scheme of more than one or two shades. It’s a great concept that could work well for just about any farm with its simple, folk-art style. But for this contest, it may be too generic, since there is nothing here to show that it’s meant for a small lavender farm. 

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#8

Again we see the circular motif, this time with a simple color scheme, just green and lavender, with black text. The leaves, the flowers and the bee are tapered and delicate looking, reminding us that this farm’s primary purpose is to grow fragrant flowers.

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#7

This is an example of a designer using a single color for a concept. It makes sense to use only various shades of lavender for this design, and in fact this is exactly what the creatives did for many of the concepts submitted. This one shows mountains within the icon, so not rolling hills exactly, but they are framed in lavender flowers with a buzzing bee in the outline.

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#6

This design takes a stylized approach to the lavender flower. While perhaps not botanically accurate, this design is attractive and memorable, which is always a plus for branding purposes. A good example of “less is more” when it comes to logo design.

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#5

This design stands out as being different from every other submission in this contest. The shape is pentagonal, rather than round, and the lines are crisp and clean without looking corporate. Even with these simple images, we still see the rolling hills, flowers and bees. All in all, it’s a clever design.

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#4

The flowers in this logo appear to be growing out of the circle, suggesting that they must be popping out from a much larger field. Unlike the two very symmetrical designs above, this one is offset and hints at the asymmetry of nature.

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#3

Lavender and green was the most common color scheme used in this design contest. This one has a pot in the middle with a teardrop shape inside. Since the farm’s purpose is to grow lavender to create essential oil products, this design focuses on that. 

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#2

This is a fantastic design and it incorporates many of the style elements we’ve seen so far. A circular shape with an asymmetrical design, natural images drawn in a stylized way, and a simple, two-tone lavender color scheme. 

And the Winner Is…

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This logo is actually quite similar to the one above in terms of the elements used, but the images appear a bit softer and more delicate, so ultimately it must have suited the client’s preferences more. In the end, a simple flower stem and small bottle of oil seem to capture the brand  of this farm more than any image of rolling fields or tractors or buzzing bees could.

This client got 77 design concepts for this contest, and awarded a prize of $50 to the winner. It goes to show that even when you’re working with a small budget, it’s possible to get a quality logo design. 

Check out other Farm Design contests:

The Farm…And Beyond  – A small farm (3 acres) with chickens, alpaca, lemon trees, and grown fruit, veggies, herbs, etc. Potentially going to set up a shop (online and for markets) to sell things such as jams, marmalade, pickles, pottery, and basket weaving.

Moonlight Farms – The company is a farmhouse wedding venue & campus (animals, barns). They offer twilight and moonlight weddings. The feel of the company is very natural, outdoorsy, and farmlike.

Nutrient Dense Farm  – An aspiring Biodynamic farm grown from the heart of universal love.

Root Cause Farm – A small urban organic farm selling fruits and vegetables to the neighborhood near the farm. The farm aims to make healthy, affordable food available to the local community, ultimately improving the health of local residents and building a community around the farm.

Stevens Family Farm – A small market gardening farm serving a local community.