The Identity Project - Final

In the end, I'm really pleased with the end result. I didn't make too many changes from the rough draft, but there were some. I took Adrienne's suggestion about using all caps for the name, and I think that helped solidify things a good deal. I also played around with the idea of integrating color, but it just threw off the unity of the piece. It would have been cool to add some element of red to my hair, but I think the glasses do a good enough job identifying as the figure.

I think that this project has been one of the most beneficial. I really think that I will end up using this logo in the future.

The Identity Project - Roughs

So for many of the roughs, there wasn't that much difficulty in their construction, so I'm not sure how much I can talk about them without waffling on about meaningless details. But I'll do what I can.

Starting with the simple monogram, there wasn't much to it. I found a good serif font and then expanded the forms so I could move them about freely. One adjustment I did was that I thinned the posts of the H, they would have been too thick otherwise. I did have to look around for an "s" that really fit. About halfway through, Adrienne offered the suggestion that it might work better if I tilted the s so it could interact with the h. I wasn't sure how I felt about this but thought I'd give it a shot so I made another design really quick. This went over very well in critique. We came to the conclusion that my other design, while I still like how it looks when I draw it by hand, looked too stuffy for a personal logo when generated on the computer.

The blockfort design didn't really change from what I had in my thumbnail sketches. I struggled a little bit with getting the rectangles to the size I wanted, and moved the internal lines around a lot. After critique we decided that it might work better if I thickened up the lines. I could also try to level the lines in the s with the lines in the H. I couldn't think of any good use of color for it though. I simply have an aversion to color in general. It comes from working in drawing for so long. Whenever I added color to drawings their quality went downhill and they quickly look childish. So I stick to black and white. That's why none of my identity designs use color, as a reference to my drawings, which is my major focus.

The shattered S was a disappointment. It may simply be my treatment of the piece, but it definitely reach the lofty heights Adrienne thought possible. I think it may have worked better if I had use different shapes as opposed to the linear method I used.
Please disregard the phantom s to the right, I must have forgotten to delete it in my AI file. I'm bad about tucking things off into corners on that program.

The chain design turned out much better. I set off the T from the rest of the H by a subtle value difference. Otherwise, it was fairly easy to connect all of the letter forms together. This was one of the favorite during our critique. They thought the connection was good, and that the T was hidden enough it didn't smack them in the face. Suggestions were that the sideway s drew too much attention to the left. A possible solution to this would be flipping it vertical and wrapping it around the T that way. I'm just afraid of that looking a little cliche.

Finally came the silhouette design. I ad my roommate take pictures of me so I could use my own profile, and I think that really made the extra connection. For the font at the bottom I just used Eurostile because I really like the simplicity and straightforwardness of the letterforms. I just traced it with the pen tool and and made the shape of my glasses white. Then I just made me lean up against the H and there it was. This was by far the favorite of everyone during the critique of my work. They thought it captured my personality the best, and they really enjoyed how the silhouette could easily be identified as me. There was the question of how it would look if you could see my arms and legs. Luckily, I had made a test version of that as well. In the end, the all black version worked better because the grey in the other design was too distracting. I'm going to continue with this design, and I don't think I have that many changes to make. Adrienne thinks it would be wise to make the name at the bottom all caps so as to minimize the up and down movement, which would in turn help ground the entire piece. I also needed to pull in the letters with the edge of my shoes. Adrienne also thought it would be interesting to maybe make the figure a different color, but as I mentioned earlier, I prefer to black and white. I'm not saying I won't give it a try, but I'm highly biased.

The Identity Project - Thumbnails

Our final project for Visual Communication 1 was to design a logo or graphic identity for ourselves. Our guidelines were that we our design had to be reproducible in in both large and small sizes, and we had the option of creating both a color and black and white version of the design.
Adrienne suggested that we start off by asking our friends and family to give five words that describe us. I decided to give it a shot, and sent about 50 emails to people. The next day my inbox was flooded, and I had to sift through about eight million adjectives. Luckily there was some element of overlap between them all. As much as I wanted to do a design emphasizing my "gangsta"-ness, I decided my design would be geared towards the more common descriptions. Some of the more common words were: intelligent, genuine, calm (laid back), kind, curly red hair, passionate, sincere, and unique. I was a little daunted by the task of graphically representing these things, but I guess thats why we needed to make 50 thumbnails, so we could have lots of mulligans.

So I could describe each and every one of my thumbnails and the thought process behind it, but instead I'll just go over the five designs I decided to turn into roughs.
The first one was simply a monogram that I've been signing my drawings with for some time now. I first began thinking about designing a personal monogram after writing a paper on Albrecht Durer last semester. I really liked how he incorporated his initials into his work and I decided to see what I could come up with for myself. The design up in the left hand corner is what I came up with.

The next design I decided to work with was what I would later call the blockfort logo. It was just a simple representation of an S and an H. It was simple, yet united, so I think it fit with my list of characteristics. My favorite part was the lines I used to define the crossbar of the H were actually T's, which made the subtle reference to my middle name. Adrienne and I discussed that this would also be a good design to incorporate color into.










The third design was really just a blip of an idea, that I would make an S out of my last name. Adrienne was surprisingly taken with this idea. She thought though that rather than using type to make the S, I should just try and make sort of broken letter form. I thought that might not be too bad, and it would be unified while still comprised of smaller parts, which I think I can relate too.







Next came a design that I based on the idea of a chain. Chains are flexible but strong, and I think that it would make a good reference to my own personality and work. At first I couldn't think of a way to interlock all of my initials. The T was the big problem, but Adrienne's suggestion of incorporating it into the H seemed like a great solution, so I thought it would be cool to see how this design would turn out on the computer, so I decided to work on it some more.
Finally, my last design was yet another playful design. I thought it would be cool if I just had a the H with a silhouette of a person just chilling up against it. I really thought this wouldbe neat because I'm often the person sitting back and observing while things are going on. I like to take my time and enjoy things as they come. I thought this would be cool, so we'll see how it and the others turn out in comps.

Social Action - Final

The final draft of my hourglass design had several changes from the design seen in the roughs. For one, I decreased the amount of sand in the top bulb. Previously it gave more of the impression that we have time, and I wanted it to feel like time was running out. In addition to this, I added a small reference to a skull in the lower bulb. I like the placement, it doesn't jump out but viewers can see it after about 20 secs or so. Finally I worked with the text. I tried bolding the font like Adrienne suggested, but it seemed way too heavy, and weighted the design towards the bottom. We eventually tried a way where we slightly increased the line thickness. Later I had the idea of trying to have a reflection, and I think that works out fairly well. If I had to mat it again though, I would have gone with a 11"x 17" size, because the 8.5"x 14" seems a little small.

Social Action - Roughs

Creating the roughs for this project wasn't all that bad. They came together fairly easily and I still had a hard time deciding which one I wanted to use as my final design.

The design with the bomb was actually fairly straight forward. I just found a good image of Little Boy, made a pen object out of it, then combined it with a pen object I made by tracing an image of the Capitol dome. The hardest part about the whole process was tracing the dome, with the pillars and windows it took a little while. during the critique the biggest problem was with the background. I had felt like it was a little distracting and everyone seemed to agree. I needed to find a way to simplify the background, since it was competing for attention. We also discussed how it would be more effective as a sort of political statement, with the bomb moving towards a certain target or something.

The hourglass design was a bit simpler to work with. Once again I found a good image of and hourglass and traced it. I worked with the colors for a while, trying to decide whether or not to fill it in with colors referencing wood or metal. Finally I decided to try leaving it empty, except for the sand. I think that it draws attention to the fact that time is almost out. I really liked the was the word "disarm" came out. I used Eurostile as the font and I like the way it works. Comments for this design was that maybe I should try to incorporate some shapes like skulls or bombs into the sand. Adrienne also suggest that I try to bold the text to give it a little more punch.

Finally, the Risk design was I think the least successful. I was going to try and bring my board from home so I could scan it in, but I wasn't able to make it home. So I ended up using an image from the web, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. I didn't really make any adjustments from the concept idea. After the critique, I think it would work better if I had a hand holding a risk card with a mushroom cloud in place of one of the other symbols. It would allow a more direct connection with the viewer.

I decided to continue working with the hourglass design, so we'll see how it turns out.

Social Action - Thumbnails

This assignment was all about creating a poster with some sort of social action message (peace, environment, sexism, etc.). We could use any colors we needed the only other requirement was that it needed to be at least 8.5" x 14". As I mentioned in the thumbnail section of the photo collage project, I have a certain fascination and interest in nuclear weapons and disarmament. I decided that would be the basis for my thumbnails.

We had to make 20 thumbnail sketches for this project and I think I came up with some good ones for the most part. After looking over them with Adrienne, I picked out three to continue working with. The first was an image of a bomb, except that the warhead was the dome from Capitol Hill. I wanted to make a connection about how these actions are put in motion, and who are responsible for the decisions to go to war and bomb populations. This was supposed to be focused on nuclear weapons in particular, so I used a photo of Little Boy as the body of the image. Adrienne also suggested making a later design (plain type with the words "NOCLEAR WEAPONS") a sort of letter mark in order to make a stronger connection with atomic weapons.

The next design was really kind of simple. When I put it down I didn't really expect to use it but Adrienne thought it had potential and after discussing it I agreed. It was simply an image of an hourglass with the word "disarm" underneath it. In the thumbnail I had meant the two bulbs of the hourglass to be made out of warheads. After deciding to work on this idea further, I decided to make it more of a general figure rather than trying to make too many specific references.

My final thumbnail was another one I put down without much thought. The idea was to use the image of a risk board, with lines charting out the paths of missiles, and then having an ominous message at the bottom. I was surprised at how much Adrienne liked this design. Once again, talking with her made me see more potential in this image when I first thought of it. The idea that the game is Risk, and that in games someone is always the loser, both have multiple connections with the message I wanted to get across. I want to point out how foolish it is that we have more than enough nuclear weaponry to destroy most of civilization, not including the effects of fallout and radiation.

All three of these design have potential and I'm in the unfamiliar situation of liking them all. I'll just have to see how the roughs turn out.

Photo Collage - Final

There isn't much to say about the final, there were only a few minor changes I made from the rough. The first was of course moving the picture from the upper left hand corner. I placed it at the foot of the mushroom cloud and then moved the lady out. I also added a watercolor effect to the background in an effort to take away of of the inherent graininess. I wish that I had been able to increase the size, but the resolution wouldn't hold up. Otherwise I'm fairly satisfied with the outcome.