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.