Last September, Todoist, my preferred to-do manager and an essential part of how I get things done every day, revealed a redesigned logo. I was very happy to see that it was received positively by the design community—and not just because I played a small part in its development as an advisor. I can hardly take any substantial credit for its success anyway, as all of the real work was done by Todoist’s talented in-house brand designer, Wallace Chao, who worked incredibly hard to arrive at the final product.

Observing his process was a treat; with each iteration, Wallace would produce countless new ideas, all presented impeccably in narrative documents that explained the reasoning and merits of each possible variant. When, after several months, he and the team finally arrived at the completed logo, I suggested that he apply that documentarian approach to the project as a whole, and share with the world how the logo came to be. He’s done so in this beautiful explainer, embedded below from Issuu (unfortunately, on mobile devices the doc opens in a new window). I think you’ll agree that it’s very enlightening.

http://issuu.com/todoist/docs/todoistlogoprocess?e=0/31338501