Custom 20i logos – a history

It’s a way of recording for posterity all the custom logos we’ve made.
It will be updated regularly – as we make them – and will include a glimpse of the design processes behind them. 

Why we do it

We do it because we can, it’s fun and people generally seem to like it!

We like to show what we’re interested-in. So there’s a lot of sci-fi – sorry – but we’re trying to expand beyond that!

Yeah – it is a bit like Google’s doodles, but we’re in no way influenced by such things…

How we do it

All the designs were created by our awesome in-house designers. There are a few principles we follow.

The custom logo:

• must work when it is small (like in the corner of our site – an important element of all logos, of course) 
• must still look like our logo – so should use our brand colours predominantly, for example
• shouldn’t take too long to put together – our designers have a lot of other (less fun) work to do…

So, in reverse chronological order….

Pancake Day 2023

We’re here to be the best web host and eat pancakes. And we’re all out of pancakes.

Christmas 2022

The holly and the ivy…

Halloween 2022

In a feat of genius punnery not seen since Shakespeare, it was time to find the skulls in ‘Skull Reunion‘.

C’mon Lionesses!

OK, this is a bit of a cheat, since it’s the same logo we used in 2021 for England…but what could we do? Make the lions female??! 😜

The Queen’s Jubilee

70 years of Her Royal Majesty.

Green Hosting

Planet-pleasing hosting, on 100% renewable power.

Christmas 2021

The snowperson’s name is Debbie. Let it snow, let it snow…but not when I have to commute to the office, please.

Halloween 2021

Pumpkin Pursuit!

C’mon England!

Our logo for England reaching the semi-finals in the Euros.

Star Wars Day 2021

May the fourth be with you…

Easter 2021

Hosting eggsperts.

World Backup Day

Every day is Backup Day at 20i, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get a helpful reminder on March 31st (don’t be an April Fool!).

Christmas 2020

Rockin’ around the (socially-distanced) Christmas tree…

Ghost Hunt 2020

It was so popular in 2019, we had to make it annual!

Our fully registered trademark

Spot the difference? It’s the ‘R’ instead of ‘TM’. In this particular case, the ‘R’ stands for ‘Richard’.

Valentine’s 2020

Feelin’ the lurve.

Christmas 2019

Here’s what our designer Emily had to say about her design: “A bauble was a perfect festive object to incorporate into the 2019 logo due to its simplistic rounded shape and whimsical connotations.

To ensure it reflected the 20i branding, I used the same colours for visual consistency. The final touch was to hang it on the website header and create other graphics using the bauble shape to continue the theme.”

Hallowe’en 2019 Ghost Hunt

This was a competition to find ghosts on our site. It’s resemblance to any other well-known logos in popular culture is purely coincidental.

Avengers Endgame

We did consider removing 50% of our logo, but that didn’t wo-

Game of Thrones

Hodor.

The Lego Movie 2

We had our logo made in Lego! Awesome.

You can also see an animated version here.

New Year 2018-2019

While these changes may seem relatively-simple, they needed more work than you might expect. The 20i typeface is custom-made, so new digits had to be created.

However, this inspired our designer to create the whole alphabet and numerical digits – so it will become easier in the future (and it will be nice to have our own typeface!).

Christmas 2018

We went for a Christmas pudding theme this year.

Here’s why Ian chose it:

“A festive christmas pudding was the perfect christmas graphic concept for the 2018 20i logo, due to its shape.

I ensured the style matched our branding, flat with strokes that are related to the fill colour rather than just stroking with black or dark grey (something that Disney have done for years and it makes things seem friendly).”

Black Friday (November 2018)

We did a ‘1p for your first month’ offer, so this design was a bit of a no-brainer.

Hallowe’en 2018

Re-cellar spider-web ghosting from twenty AIIIGH!

Doctor Who (October 2018)

This was created to celebrate the start of the 37th season (!) of Doctor Who. Having a Whovian (me!) on our staff helped for inspiration, but we didn’t get it right at first:

The above shows an attempt to use a sonic screwdriver (difficult to tell what it is), the Prydonian Seal of the Timelords (too hardcore) and the first draft of the TARDIS. Thankfully, the Logopolis didn’t arrest us for copyright infringement (terrible Whovian joke).

Bat-Signal (September 2018)

A bit of an unusual  one. This breaks the rules mentioned in the intro, but this one wasn’t for public consumption, so it gets a pass.

It was just a bit of five-minute fun, as someone had referred to themselves as ‘sending out a Bat-Signal’ – as in: needing help from a hero. We stepped-up and helped them with their web hosting.

World Cup Final (July 2018)

Like most England fans, we went from sensibly cautious to hopelessly optimistic…to grievously disappointed…

But our logo put in a fine performance.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 2018)

Well, we couldn’t miss an opportunity to use the most iconic spaceship this side of Corellia, the Millenium Falcon.

Xmas 2017

Ho-ho-hosting.

The Last Jedi (December 2017)

We went full-on with this one, even including a cute X-Wing GIF on our home page. Yay – we’re the web hosting rebels in a galaxy dominated by evil! ?

I did suggest an alternative – the symbol of the First Order – but it was rightly assumed that it might have some negative connotations…

A work in progress (May 2017)

We made this ‘design in progress’ logo to represent the creation of 20i, and is used on our About us page.

And finally…

Anyone remember this?