Podcasts are an amazing innovation. I love listening to them because they are educational and entertaining. Or perhaps, I just work by myself all day and it’s good to hear another human voice. There are a handful of podcasts that have become an almost sacred part of my weekly routine.
Will Webb’s The Heritage Podcast is one such podcast. Will’s goal is to offer an entire liberal arts education in podcast form. That is a tremendously aspirational goal, he admits. Basically, he’s reading a whole bachelor’s degree worth of books and giving the listeners a free book report. It’s fascinating.
I enjoyed the podcast immensely but, as a visual person, I felt the podcast graphics, while on-theme, didn’t really do Will’s audio content justice. The things that make his podcast so enjoyable, his quirky sense of humor and casual tone, weren’t being portrayed at all. Take a look at where we started. It’s not terrible, but it is a little bland.
I reached out to Will and offered my services to re-brand his podcast. He accepted. We started down the discovery process and I came back with a handful of concepts:
Anything look unexpected? Yeah, those last two. The dolphins. What’s that about? You see way back in an early episode he recounts a ludicrous story from antiquity (Herodotus’s History) about a man who rode on the back of a dolphin across the sea. More on that here. Herodotus’s episode is a fantastical account scattered amid the rest of his seemingly believable tales. It’s kind of like if a witness was called into court to recount a crime they saw and just when they were wrapping up their incredibly convincing eyewitness account, they mentioned that after they get out of court they’re going to go for a unicorn ride. You, as a juror, would be hardpressed to take the rest of the witness’s testimony seriously.
Anyway, in order to highlight the absurdity, Will intermittently uses a dolphin sound effect here and there for giggles and/or to make a point about the reliability of source materials. It works although you probably have to hear it for yourself.
So that’s the logo Will selected. I took it back to the lab and polished it up. The rest is history. Here’s the final:
And here’s a video of the process:
I really enjoyed working on this project because I believe so much in what Will is doing. If you’d like to check out his website to learn more, click here.
Have a great week,
