How does a great logo come to be?   Now that we have one, we can share a few insights.  

We adore our logo. We love what it stands for, and we love how it came to us:  as a singular gift created and given by talented, generous artists at Grey Advertising and Deseta Design.

When we established Ethiopia Education Initiatives (EEI) for the ambitious purpose of bringing quality education opportunities to Ethiopian kids, we knew we’d need many hands helping along the way.  So we were thrilled when Grey Advertising offered its design services pro bono. Elitza Daskalova and Nicole Garcia shared their impeccable taste and thoughtful expertise and worked on our project with such enthusiasm. Thanks to them, EEI has a gorgeous website and an iconic logo.

The first concept for the logo came from co-founder Rebecca Haile’s sister, designer Maro Haile, whose Ethiopian-inspired artwork can be seen at deseta.net.  Maro drew sketches incorporating images of the sun, which symbolizes awakening and enlightenment, and mountains, which are a major topographical feature across Ethiopia.  Debre Birhan, the town where the Haile-Manas Academy, EEI’s first project, is located, translates as “mountain of light”, so this was quite fitting. Her decorative motifs evoke traditional woven fabrics.

Grey Advertising brought advertising savvy to the process and recognized that logos need to be simple and spare for easy consumer recognition. Taking Maro’s drawings as a starting point, Nicole and Elitza pared down and re-imagined the symbols to create new elements for the logo.   

Recombined, the elements became a strong, unified whole.  And with the clever use of color - black for EEI, and brown and blue (inspired again by Ethiopian textiles) for Haile-Manas Academy - Nicole and Elitza created an image that could both stand for distinct identities and communicate the affiliation between the entities.  

The results are beautiful, distinctive logos that will look great on letterhead and school uniforms and everything in between.   That’s how a great logo comes to be. 

How lucky we are to have this account of collaboration and generosity be a key chapter in the story of our origins.