Combinations of type and image for logo

When beginning my logo development I was aware of the strength of Guinness' logo and identity. I wanted to build on their brand, creating a differentiation rather than completely re branding their product.

I took their original logos and vectored the type from it. 

The first of the above is a vector direct from the logo. I thought that if I used their type that I could begin to work with the strength of black and white or the connections with health.  

This attempt in clumsily placing the type and a stretched cross together is horrible, something I could only imagine stamped onto a t-shirt for the football world cup, on sale in all tescos. Definitely not a logo or branding identity I was going for.

Here I began to start considering re branding Guinness with a function. 'Guinness plus', a name that could be combined with a USP and informative promotion. 

I thought that there could be something quite possible about 'Guinness +'. Within my research it reminded me of things such as 'Guinness extra cold'. Similarly to extra cold, there wasn't a huge change in the product. Perhaps, through promotion there could be extra antioxidents within the 'Guinness +'  or some of the profit could go to a heart related charity. These things obviously I will decide at a later date.

The logo above however, was the starting point for some progression. Through some kerning, I was happy with the typeface and spacing. The '+' in black-white doesn't look particularly attractive or very healthy. So I decided to move onto the red cross' logo.

Below I trialled how it would look with a fade into white. This was acceptable but I also tried it as a solid block of colour with the type in a different position.

I started to realise that I was limiting myself with the logo of just text and a cross. Therefore, I started to think back to my 150 logos and the one that the group had picked for me. It bought me back to considering the image of a pint of Guinness. This iconic colouring might work better with the 'guinness +' combination. I decided to put it within a circle as I thought it might create a better frame for the pint glass. 

This further experimentation was mildly progressive but it made me realise how hard it was to try and create a logo for this sort of branding as the logo for Guinness is so well established. It was something that I started to find very tricky.