Say the name,
and it smiles.

The delivered vertical logo, in its colourway for yellow

00The project

Client: MOCA International Academy
Sector: International education
Presented: May 2024
Delivered: June 2024

MOCA International Academy is an international education academy. In May 2024 we designed its logo: four round lowercase letters drawn from one set of circles, with a smile hung beneath the c and the a — so the name arrives already smiling.

Logo design
Horizontal & vertical lockups
Mono & reversed versions
Brand colours
Favicon
AI, PDF & SVG files

01Construction

The smile was
already in the letters.

The m, o, c and a share one stroke weight and one set of circles, with every corner rounded off. The bowls of the c and the a sit inside a larger circle; follow its lower half and you have the smile. Below are the guides from the original drawing, only softened in colour.

The original construction drawing: letters and smile on one set of circles and guides — Construction drawing, May 2024

Creative Academy

创建未来，学术领航

A second reading from the presentation: the c and the a are also the initials of Creative Academy.

02Getting there

From a pair of glasses
to a smile.

The first draft started from a pair of round glasses — two rims and a bridge, set into the o and C of MoCA in black and orange. The second round began again from lowercase letters: a colon, a filled o, a stacked block. Then an arc was hung beneath the letters and tried wider, narrower, deeper, until it held the c and the a.

First-round idea: two rims and a bridge, set into the o and C of MoCA — ARound one · the glasses idea

BRound one · the logo

Second-round sketches in black: a colon, a filled o, a stacked monogram — CRound two · sketches in black

Smile studies: the arc tried at different widths and depths — DRound two · how wide, how deep

Round-two sketches: a colon, and plain lowercase — CRound two · sketches in black

Round-two sketches: a filled o and a stacked block — A filled o, a stacked block

Three yellow wordmarks before the smile — DRound two · before the smile

Four smiles of different width and depth — How wide, how deep

Another direction: the o as a planet on its orbit, above the line 宇宙永恒学无止境 — Another direction from the same presentation: the o becomes a planet on its orbit — “the universe is endless, and so is learning”.

03Colour

Yellow does the talking.
Violet signs off.

In the first conversation the client leaned towards a yellow-orange. We settled it as a sunshine yellow, with violet for the academy’s name, and put two alternatives alongside: coral as the lead colour, or multicoloured letters on deep violet. The delivered files use the yellow and the violet.

Sunshine#FFBB00
RGB 255 187 0

Violet#664AD6
RGB 102 74 214

Paper#F0EEE3
RGB 240 238 227

Colour option: sunshine yellow with violet — 01Yellow with violet · delivered

Colour option: coral — 02Coral · alternative

Colour option: multicolour letters on deep violet — 03Multicolour · alternative

04The files

It smiles
on any ground.

The delivery covers a horizontal and a vertical lockup, with a colourway for yellow grounds, one for dark grounds, black and white mono versions, and a favicon. Every one is the same set of outlines; only the colour changes.

Vertical · on yellow