Here's my first thoughts for your logo... #1. I've gone for a very web 2.0 friendly style that is a straight up pictorial representation of the business name that speaks to the sustainability aspect of what you do.
Entry #2 is simply to show how it might look in single colour application.
As for the question of to use green or not to use green... Brand personality has been around a while now, but complex personality is a relatively new area of discovery that is evolving with the explosion of social media. We now live in a world where we can have dialogue directly with our customers and this gives us the opportunity to build a complex personality around our brands. People all have complex personalities, we laugh, we cry, we get cranky, we love. A brand that shows contradictory complexity gives people something to engage with. In the past contradictions such as McDonalds selling salad was thought to be a recipe for disaster, but now their seemingly contradictory traits are known to help build intrigue, interest and eventually trust and loyalty. So should you use a colour other than green? Absolutely! Run with it! Doing so will give you a point of interest that might just be the beginnings of a successful complex brand personality.
Another thing to consider is visual leverage from old to new...
When developing a re-brand it is very important to use some visual elements of the old brand to leverage recognition value in the new. BP kept it's colours and changed the shape, Apple kept the shape and changed its colours. Visual leverage helps to keep current customers comfortable and at ease. A drastic change that is not seen coming will often alienate some sections of your market.
I took a look at your existing visual brand and have incorporated a couple of elements into the design of #1. The circle has remained as too has the use of gum green.
I'd be interested in hearing more about your reasons for a re-brand. To use BP as an example again, they changed logo because they were becoming seen as a big polluting bad guy. So they kept their colours for recognition purposes and moved away from the stern shield to an environmental looking geometric flower.
Any thoughts you have regarding your reasons for a re-brand would give me the best clue for what new direction to take with the logo design.
Hi Robin, love this and thanks for your email. We are not really rebranding, more like establishing one. The existing logo has just been something we have persevered as we have been too busy to focus on our online presence. We are having our website redone and this is an opportunity for a logo revisit. The new logo will direct the tone of the website. (simple wordpress but a bit trickier than what we have now.) We need a smarter logo. We don't sell ourselves through our logo or website, but as we work in the creative industries our online identity needs to be a bit snazzy...
#4 Thinking a little about the quality of product and calibre of client I thought I'd put something together that has a bit more sophistication about it. Contrary to everything I mentioned about not having to necessarily use green, I couldn't avoid it on this occasion because I thought it looked so good!
I thought this colour scheme, complete with simple grey gradient would work well as a basis for your new site design.
#5 A variant using the blue from the secondary Pacific rather than the obvious green of Greenshoot... I don't mind this, but I have to admit I got excited about entry #4. :)
Thanks again for your logos. We really love #4 too. We have it ranked at number two at the moment. We are awaiting our fourth director to come back from Cannes (!) and she will weigh in. It is looking likely that the currently ranked 1st will win though. We have one director who is adamantly against leaves (which she didn't tell me upon my writing the brief), so that has kind of knocked your #4 out of first spot.
We really love your bringing the ocean/pacific/blue/wave into it, however too, in your other logo.
Thanks again so much for taking the time to submit. You never know, we may end up with yours yet, if the Cannes visiting director loves leaves and can outshout our non-leaves director.
I might be a bit cheeky here and say that I'd be inclined to ask the anti-leaf director to rationalise her dislike for leaves... it would be interesting to find out if she is making branding decisions based on internal whims or from a rationalised target audience perspective. ;)
Good luck with the choosing process, sounds like you have some long discussions to be had!