About Waypoint

Waypoint is a web-based application designed to help you track progress toward goals for a virtual or real-world distance challenge.

Virtual distance challenges take several forms. One of the most popular, the format used by The Conqueror Challenge, gives you a virtual marker along a path defined at another real-world location. For example, you could take a 96-mile adventure to Chichen Itza by walking your regular route through your neighborhood. You track your progress either via manual data entry or through a connected fitness tracker such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch.

My thought process

I had a few themes and ideas I wanted to include in the logo:

• Tracking progress on a map
• The “You are here” pin frequently seen in maps apps
• Dotted lines representing the path of a journey

I wanted a logo where each piece of it, the graphic and the text, could work together as well as on their own. The graphic must work as a native app icon on phones and as a browser tab icon, within a square aspect ratio.

Choosing a font

After trying several sans-serif fonts and not entirely liking any of them, I chose to create custom lettering instead. I used most of the letters from the font I liked the most, and modified the rest. I cut out sections from the A, P, and T to add some visual interest. The N had blocky corners, so I redrew it with sharp points to match the W more closely.

The last change I made was replacing the O entirely with a perfect circle and a dot in the center. I was inspired by one of the other distance tracker apps I use, which has a circle as the user’s location instead of a teardrop-shaped pin. Including both motifs makes the logo feel more complete and appeals to a wider variety of aesthetics.