While working for DraftFCB (now just FCB), I touched a lot of different client work. My core client was mostly Ontario Power Authority (OPA), Dole Foods, and Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG). I touched a little bit of TDBank, Coors, Johnson & Johnson and a bunch of others. I think theres a lot of reasons for it. Some of them negative – I was having a lot of trouble fitting in at the agency, and adjusting my style of work to their style of management. Some of them were positive – I could be relied on to take a FUBAR project and clean it up. I’d been brought in on a number of late, behind and over-budget projects that for whatever reason had been a bit derailed.
PlayOLG was probably my favourite. I don’t know the full story behind what happened before it ended up in my lap. All I know is that OLG was struggling to compete with international online gambling sites like Pokerstars. They were making a bid to open up a new revenue stream to keep that money in the province by opening up online gaming. The name that was chosen for this online gambling platform was PlayOLG (.ca). For whatever reason, the branding hadn’t come together and had been going back and forth for months.
Myself, and another colleague, Rob Paron were tasked with putting this one to bed. Rob is one of the best logo designers I know, and I admire his talent and skill greatly. I’d been designated a sort of ‘clean-up’ guy that fixed the projects gone bad. So we each took our briefs and went off into our own little corners and started creating new options, trying to incorporate months of feedback and dead designs. I honestly figured Rob would nail it right out of the gate, but we both struggled with it.
After creating dozens (I’m not kidding) of designs, I stumbled across a font that made it click for me. It was a big blocky font, and I realized that I could use the core OLG logo as the ‘A’ in play. Suddenly, it all came together – we had a big red call to action as a logo that worked fantastically with the core brand. Big hit. Confetti. Cheering. Ok, there wasn’t cheering and confetti, but it felt pretty damn good to ‘get there’ with this project.
