1. Ideation and Research*;
*my research was admittedly lacking for this project, and I think one of the reasons I struggled so much to come up with a strong idea and that I could then develop and refine was because of this. After a cursory look in the library for any books specifically about band logos (not even typography in general) I gave up and just googled a bunch of bands from similar genres of music and picked the ones I though looked cool.
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If nothing else, from this project I've learned that I know next to nothing about music genres. I ended up deciding on a vaguely punk/ grunge/ metal-ish?? vibe for 'Elitist Pedestal' (i think the ambiguity of this choice didn't help with the direction of my work). There were many different avenues I wanted explore to begin with, playing around with illegible type-logos, spiky + spidery fonts, as well as various symbols that spoke to what I envisioned for the band. My goal was to end up with both a type logo and a mark logo that could be used separately or together for additional versatility (although in hindsight I think that my commitment to this caused me to leave behind some of my better ideas, and I just couldn't decide what I wanted the mark to be.) |
Some (not very helpful) logo design videos I watched;
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Typeface Tutorial;
Above is the typeface I produced during our tutorial session. I had a lot of fun making it and it expanded my perception of typography, as well as developing my confidence using Adobe Illustrator. I decided I wanted to expand on it further so...
...I made a typeface
I wanted it to have a grungy, organic vibe and to be made from natural 3D elements, so I went for a walk in the lakes and took a bunch of pictures of hedges and branches etc. so that I could use the silhouettes of them to create the lettering. All of the letters were taken from one section of an image I took as I thought it would make them more cohesive - although having vastly different appearances between letters would have looked pretty interesting - so I had be creative with how I approached each one. Some of the letters look a little janky and maybe need some tlc but overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome.
2. Development;
Here I was developing and refining some of the main themes that I had established in the first week - namely a classical/ ancient Greco-Roman feel +/or a juxtaposition between rigidity and structure/sharp edges with more delicate elements. I played around with various motifs and eventually realised that I'd basically only been using pencil and markers to draw out my ideas, so I started messing around with inks on A2 sheets of paper.
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Somehow, I made more progress with my ideas on that one day of experimentation alone than I had the whole of the last week. The effect of blowing the wet ink around as it dried I thought looked especially interesting, but I felt that I'd wasted too much time before I got to that point that I couldn't go back and expand on it more. |
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OUTCOMES;
I'm a little disappointed with my outcome as I don't think I even picked the best out of my final options and even then I think I had better ideas that suited the band better earlier on that I abandoned because it didn't fit in with what I thought I wanted it to be.
I may well end up revisiting it -- I think the flower thing is kind of dumb and has no reason to be there other than I happened to doodle it a few days before the project deadline, and the type is pretty half hearted. I think it has some cool texture but aside from that it's pretty boring and - again - isn't a development of what I'd spent three weeks working on, I just happened to draw it and then just vectorised the image I took of it in Adobe Illustrator and called it a day.
I may well end up revisiting it -- I think the flower thing is kind of dumb and has no reason to be there other than I happened to doodle it a few days before the project deadline, and the type is pretty half hearted. I think it has some cool texture but aside from that it's pretty boring and - again - isn't a development of what I'd spent three weeks working on, I just happened to draw it and then just vectorised the image I took of it in Adobe Illustrator and called it a day.