Shivelight Logo Design
Brand Identity
Shivelight is a Seattle-based company that takes the stress out of IT for small businesses, providing managed services and custom support to help clients work more efficiently and keep their systems secure.
After experiencing solid growth over the last couple of years, the company had outgrown its brand identity—Shivelight needed visual credibility to match its tech expertise and high level of service.
Company owner and co-founder Mahlon Otero has known Josh and the Chalkbox team since 2020, so when we launched this project he was familiar with our process and work. We were familiar with Shivelight, too, because Chalkbox is a client.
Trees, trees, and more trees
During our research, we found that Shivelight’s competition has branding that varies widely in quality; compared to other fields, tech-related businesses often place more importance on design, so the good stuff was pretty good. We needed to elevate Shivelight visually so it looks like it belongs in the upper echelon of IT firms.
We also faced a unique challenge: incorporating a tree into the identity, but at the same time, not being too obvious about it. “Shivelight” refers to the light that streams through trees in a forest (no, we didn’t know this, either), so it needed to play some role in the Shivelight logo.
But the business landscape in Seattle is saturated with trees, in any and all fields. Need a plumber? Tree logo. Want to buy some yarn? Tree logo with knitting needle. Booking a hotel? You might even see two trees. We had to find a way to make Shivelight’s tree—whatever form it took—stand out among the forest of other tree logos.
Refined, yet accessible and relevant
We shared our ideas openly with Mahlon and his wife (company co-founder Alison), sketching and then working together to move the right ideas forward. One of Shivelight’s key differentiators is the team’s ability to explain the mysteries of IT with plain language and patience (we can personally attest to this). The brand identity needed to reflect that, projecting expertise and knowledge while remaining approachable for regular people using complicated technology.
The final mark incorporates a stylized tree with angled beams of light flowing through it, paired with a semi-condensed, rounded typeface. It feels familiar, yet a touch futuristic—clearly rooted in the technology space, but like the people at Shivelight, open and friendly.
‘‘We couldn’t be happier’’
“Our old logo was decent, but it didn’t reflect where we are now as a business,” Mahlon says. “Chalkbox worked closely with us to create something that truly elevates Shivelight, with a look and feel that will resonate with our audience. We couldn’t be happier—the new logo is perfect.”
