Redtail is a developer-owned software firm catering to the financial advice industry, named for the CEO’s red-tailed golden retriever. This company was both cloud-based and dog-centric from its inception (officially 2003). While I firmly believe in embracing the nerd in all of us, its original nascar-meets-starwars logo was a little dated. My recommendation of a dog, directly relating to the name Redtail, was ultimately embraced, and the final logo lockup is a friendly, icon-like red dog, with the wag of its tail reflected in the curvy R of Redtail.
The developer-CEO was most comfortable with dev-style icons as a basis for the branded product logos. I introduced a simple circle-based system using slightly customized Streamline icons.