Disclaimer: You should be able to click and enlarge most of the images below to catch more detail.
Project 3 of 4 for my Graphic Design I class was a logotype. The assignment included being paired with one of our classmates, and design a logo for them. In essence, we were given a mock-client. My partner's name was Amber Irene Sturgis.
To start generating ideas for her logo, I interviewed her on her interests, personal taste, hobbies, visual preferences, and personality traits. These were my word lists:
After I brainstormed on paper, I started looking for inspiration online. I think originally I pictured a 1950's, Leave it to Beaver's mom, housewife style. It just seemed to fit with her hobbies and her more feminine personality. These were some of my inspiration images:
That final image really stuck with me. I just loved the color scheme, and how strong the black lines were. Once I'd done all the preliminary research and had established some style objectives, I began sketching. This is always the phase where my original idea flies out the window, because something better comes out of the pen and gets my blood racing. A friend of mine always says, "Your first idea is never your best." Granted, it takes awhile for the better idea to come sometimes, that's why I use Sharpie (no matter what ends up on the paper, I love using Sharpies):
From here, my professor, Amber, and I chose the three concepts that showed the most promise, and I started in Adobe Illustrator, to add color and clean up those options, producing this:
Amber really liked the photography angle, and also liked the yellow/wheat color scheme. The "A" and "I" combined in the top two options also caught her eye, so I worked with the top option and continued to refine it. Because her name is Amber, I couldn't get away from the amber substance in the earth and it's color. I realize bugs aren't very feminine, but I found a delicate illustration of a mosquito and placed it within the "AI" combination, then painted the area an amber/gold color. Since we were illustrating for photography, I further developed the concept by incorporating the catch phrase "Capture and Preserve," since amber encasements fossilize by capturing and preserving, and photographs do the same thing. I think the metaphor worked well.
The final step was to pitch several refined options to Amber, and to let her choose the one that best represented her. This is what I presented to her:
She chose the fourth option. I cleaned it up to precision and ended up with this:
LARGE:
And that's it! What do you think?
I'll be posting my fourth project, a movie poster, before long. The fall semester has started and hopefully they'll be many more projects to share.
