Get me to that sale on time! Branding for cool Yard Sale finder

Something like "Around Town." The yard sale finder is just the first of many applications to create great local content.

You might find the following background information helpful.

We are building a software service to help people and organizations collaborate to create great content about their neighborhoods. Just about everybody in a community has an interest in accurate local content: residents, businesses, and organizations that serve the local community. These stakeholders, the friends of local search, can’t create great content on their own. They have to work together to ensure that the information in the system is accurate and trustworthy.

This is where newspapers come in. The role of newspapers is changing, and one promising new avenue for them is to provide editorial oversight about local content. Newspapers are in a bind because of the Internet, but they are also timid and not sure how to respond to its challenges.

To make it easy for newspapers to get their feet wet, we have decided to start small, with the yard sale finder. A yard sale finder has an immediate appeal, because it complements an existing product, yet doesn't require a large effort in time or money. Yard sales are seasonal, which is even better. The online finder will include features not available in print: flexible searching, trip planning, driving directions, and rich content, including photos and video.

The branding should appeal to two audiences. The first is decision makers at local and regional newspapers, and other organizations with a trust relationship in their local community. The reaction I’d like to elicit in these executives is “Our readers would love this feature. What else can these folks do?”

The second audience is yard sale participants – buyers and sellers. Obviously, the more positive feedback they give to the newspaper, the better.

Your job is to create a yard sale finder logo. It’s likely the logo we choose will convey fun, whimsicality, camaraderie, community, and our collective ongoing fascination with finding a good deal. But be creative: a big part of whimsicality is coming across the unexpected.

The logo might be representational, by depicting some part of the yard sale experience. (Perhaps I'm asking for a scene?) But I have no preconceived notions, so try things out. I’ll do my best to give timely feedback.

The yard sale finder is the first of a series of applications to foster collaboration amongst community members and businesses to create great local content. Your design should be consistent with this larger goal.

Our direct clients are the newspapers that advertise yard sales, not the advertisers themselves. Local newspapers have an integral (though often undiscovered) role as editorial overseers responsible for ensuring the accuracy of local information. The best designs will respect and even enhance the perception of local newspapers as a primary source of trustworthy local content. (Some might consider this last directive hard to achieve. Just don't do anything disrespectful or sarcastic and you'll be fine.)