They had an outdated logo that was a very detailed drawing of a building crane and wanted something much simpler. They had lots of high quality photographs of men on the job, and the sheer size of the pipes they installed dwarfed the men inside them. If a pipe were to burst under the freeway, this is the company the city calls to fix it.

So I’m thinking: Big. Pipes. Underground. Drilling. Water. Construction.

They tell me the only caveat is that orange should be in the color palette as they already had this color on much of their equipment. The logo should be readable really small and also really big. On the side of the freeway big. I rolled up my sleeves and started drawing.

Here is a selection of some of the designs I presented.

This first design really spells out that this company drills holes in the ground, and makes use of the type itself. The next design is more abstract, and could give the feeling of being either below the surface, in a trench, or in a dugout area.

This design drew heavily on a pattern that I saw on the front of one of the drills I photographed. Though abstract, it conveys a sense of strength and toughness.

This logo takes a bird’s eye view of a pipe, and the outer shape was taken directly from a pipe I saw in one of their photographs. The configuration with the logo in the center of the type gives it a more formal appearance.

This version takes a more illustrative approach, giving a three-quarter view of a pipe. I’ve also utilized gradients, which is a less traditional, but very contemporary approach.

This next logo is my personal favorite, as it is involves simple shapes, but gives a sense of perspective and also of equipment/construction. The client liked it, but wanted something simpler still.

I took it one step further toward simplicity, and gave the orange more priority.

In the end, the client opted for the utmost in simplicity, a drilling down of sorts in their quest for visual representation of their field, and asked for a plain circle. They liked their previous typeface, Bauhaus, but wanted an update, so I chose Utopy, which is very similar to Bauhaus, but has breaks in the letterforms. The lowercase “b” feels somewhat pipelike, and they were very happy with the finished mark.