Black and Brown

Recently these posts have been... well... black and brown.  Why am I so boring? This will change, I promise.  I'll start using what designers call "color."  It'll be neat, I swear.

The Pizza Stand

Mock business sets are especially fun, not because you get to come up with some sort of whimsical business to design for, but you also get to create a thorough campaign/identity for aforementioned business.  One isn't limited to expressing all his creativity into one logo, or one business card--rather, one can show the extent of an idea, by applying it in unity across a many faceted product.

The first part was designing the logo for my business.  I love pizza.  I did a pizza business.

I wanted, initially, for my pizza business to be one of class and high culture.  I don't know why exactly, but I think somewhere in my mind I thought it ironic to serve something so humble as pizza in a high-brow place.  So I went with it.
I called the business "The Pizza Stand," a title reminiscent of the proverbial "hotdog stand," endowing above all the informing notion that this is "a place to get pizza."
To design my logo, I drew lots of inspiration (oddly enough) from the Starbucks logo.  I was starting to want my pizza place to not be so much high class, but to be more trendy and "Starbucksy" while still retaining the initial feeling of general class.
The final logo, as pictured, is elegant, simple, refined, and inviting.  All are qualities that fit my idea for "The Pizza Stand"

I should mention that the typeface used for the main display text is a typeface that I designed.  It is called "The Bald Headed Fart" and is a combination of Bauhaus and Futura.  I'm not exactly happy with the awkward space between the A and the N on stand, but due to the nature of the font, kerning it in would only hurt it more.

For the business card, I decided to be kind of playful and not use the typical box shape.  I used the shape of the logo!

Imagine the business card above (left:front, right:back) cut out into that pac-man shape.  That's what I was going for.  The idea is that it's a fun enough shape that people will be regretful to through it away, and it's an awkward enough shape that it won't do well in a wallet!  They'll have no choice but to keep it handy in their pockets!!! Mwahahahahahaha.

Below are the envelope and letter-head.  They have been designed in unity with the logo and business card.

I'd get pizza there.  Just sayin'.

From realistic(ish) to symbolic.

The assignment was to take an object... draw it as realistically as possible... then dumb it down into a solid black pictogram or symbol.  I chose a monkey.  I went through a lot of thumbnails before I decided to do this sort of stencilly, black-mass kind of thing.  I think it turned out okay.

The genius of Paul Rand... And my attempt to interpret it.

      Often considered the “American Modernist,” Paul Rand has made a name for himself as an originator of the Swiss Modern Style.  His work in corporate identity and logo design has been embedded in American history, in familiar places like ABC, IBM and UPS.  Simplicity, in it’s simplest form, is what drove the success of American designer, Paul Rand.

Rand was born Peretz Rosenbaum on August 15, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York.  He started making signs and advertisements for local businesses at a young age.  During high school, Rand took night classes at the Pratt Institute (1929-1932).  This offered him little stimulation, as was the case while studying at the Parsons School of Design (1932-1933) and the Art Students League (1933-1934).  He considered himself to be, all in all, a self-taught designer.

      Rand began his career with a part-time position making stock images for syndicate that made graphics for magazines and newspapers.  It was during this time that he amassed an impressive portfolio, and also changed his name.  He wanted to disguise the Jewish name Peretz Rosenbaum, and ultimately Paul Rand (having four letters next to four letters) made a nice symbol.

Rand is most known for his corporate identities.  His love and knowledge of modernism made it easy for him to sell his designs to companies.  To him, modernism meant clarity, and clarity was essential to his designs; he often abbreviated the companies name using one very clear sans serif font and accompanied it with one simple shape.

I personally love Rands simplistic style.  I am one who loves modernist design in general, but I consider Rand to be a master.  The clarity of his designs is uncanny, as is the originality.  It is incredible how unique an identity can be obtained by just a few simple shapes.  No one could possibly mistake the ABC logo, or the IBM logo, or the Cummins logo… even though they are all comprised of no more than a few vague elements.  His designs truly are ingenious.

If you are unfamiliar with Rand, or his work, or want to read a better written and more in-depth biography on him, please CLICK HERE.

My class was tasked to select an influential designer or illustrator, write a short report about them, and create a work in their style.  You've just read my report, and now I will show you my process for interpreting the genius of Paul Rand.

I decided to design a Rand-style logo (Rand's strongest skill) for the mill I worked for this last summer; Old Standard Wood.  We basically turned trees into guitars, and it was one of the greatest, most challenging jobs I've ever had.  If you ever want a SUPER quality guitar, contact these people.  The amount of hard work and care that goes into the craft at Old Standard Wood, is absolutely incalculable.  Now that I've finished my shout out, I'll show you how I started the logo.

I noticed Rand using a LOT of circles in his designs, so that's basically where I started:

Rand likes to abbreviate the names of his clients when working with corporate identities, so I did that.  I wanted the nature of the business to be apparent in the logo, though, since OSW hardly says anything about making guitars.  I solved this by creating the "treetar."

I decided this was not designerly enough, so I made this alternative:

I offset the treetar, and used the "O" as the sound hole.

The problem as this version developed... was that it started looking nothing like a Paul Rand design.  Above, you can see I used Garamond, which is not even a modernist typeface.  The offset treetar also created some unsightly negative spaces, which are NEVER found in a Rand design.  Every part of his designs are carefully calculated and deliberate.  So I wiped the treetar and went even more basic:

I kept the idea of the sound hole "O" and tried to merely suggest the shape of a guitar using a single line. But once again, I was unhappy with the typeface, and the shape created by the edge of the guitar and the edge of the circle.  I decided to go even MORE basic with my symbol:

I switched my typeface to Helvetica, the obvious champion of all modernist typefaces.  Instead of a guitar, I transformed my circle into the sound hole and tightened up some strings over it.  This is the final version of the logo, and I am happy with it.  Happy, not ecstatic.  I believe the symbolism is not as obvious as I would like it to be, but I don't mind my audience searching for it a bit.  I think the simplicity and clarity of this design rings in harmony with that of the master Rand, and for that I am satisfied.

Name's Font... James Font.

So the assignment was to make a portrait of someone STRICTLY out of typeface.  Obviously I chose to portray Sean Connery as 007.  Duh.  

The one on the left is the one I made initially... but unfortunately the assignment has stipulations:  Only 35 characters.  Since the armed and dangerous version uses nearly 200 characters, I redesigned it; pictured on the right.  The typeface I used was Calibri Regular.

Winedown EDIT

EDIT:  I decided to share with you BOTH of the posters I made for the Winedown Music and Art Festival.  The first one I made was called "Dancing Fairies:"

I was told by Joel (the man in charge) that he wanted the artwork to be fantasy-oriented and illustrative.  Seeing as how I am not the greatest illustrator, and I was only on the project as a volunteer, I went a little more design oriented.  I wanted to play around with some symbols... for instance the symbol for infinity. It's merely suggested in this design, and is rotated to look more like an 8, but the inspiration is there.  I felt the shape and the meaning would give the impression of those characters belonging in that position.  As if they've always been there and they will continue to dance there happily forever.  The rest of the poster is a little less than extraordinary because, at the time, the particulars of the festival were not exactly hammered out.

Joel liked this poster, but wanted a more "earthy and green" feel.  So I scrapped the dancing fairy idea and went with this:

Once again, it's more design oriented rather than illustrative, but Joel was impressed nonetheless.  As I mentioned before the edit of this post, the festival did NOT get past this point in development.  Most of the founders of the project lived in Alabama during the tornado disasters this summer and regrettably it caused the project to fall through.  I would have loved to have come up with a final product!

Paper Walker!

Paper Walker!  Complete with ninja outfit!  Dress me up or keep me shameful!  Enjoy!