This week I finalized my logo design. According to the feedbacks I got from professor Ahmed and peers, I decided to go with the clamshell design. After asking for my teachers’ and friends’ preference, I realized that design is very subjective — some like abstract and simple logo while others think the representational one is more meaningful and interesting.
I have used the pen tool again in Illustrator to smooth the outline of the clamshell, and utilized the width to do modify the thickness of my handwritten lines of ‘Ariel’ and ‘Li’ (last time the L and i were connected together and it was hard for people to recognize the letters).
For the color palette, at first I was thinking about using three different colors — a tint of cyan ( #beede1), a shade of pink, and a light yellow) and using a black stroke for everything. However, it seemed like too much going on so I tried 3 combinations of two colors and decided to go with the pink and yellow combo.
For the typeface I chose my favorite American Typewriter — Regular. I was thinking about using a typeface that’s italic and looks like my handwriting Ariel but then I feel like it’d be too delicate so I chose American Typewriter to balance out.
I am not sure if it’s weird that I put my name on the logo with my own handwriting (I tried to find existing font that looks like mine but couldn’t find one that makes me feel satisfied so I stick with my original handwriting) and for the typeface I chose “Little Precious” — at first I was thinking that the pearl in the clamshell is precious then I thought that my design work is precious too since I put into my time, energy, and heart to it. Then I realized that in the future if I want to start a clothing brand, “Little Precious” can be a good name targeting lady customers.
My brand sheet
view the pdf of the first version here. (older version with lighter pink — iterated to a darker pink, link below)
This is my first time official using Photoshop, thanks to professor Ahmed’s video and the help from Stacey! I think I could improve the blending better for the phone case but it’s a bit hard with the pink marble print substrate and I wonder how I could improve it.
After the crit during class, I adopted Kseniia’s suggestion that I should try blue. I like how it looks like, I think blue and pink together can be a duo version of my logo, though I’m not sure if people will think it’s a clamshell or waves because of the blue color.
I have updated the shade of color pink, making it darker to have a better contrast, less cuteness and more elegance.
I am inspired by Ellen’s talk “Touchy Feely” and in the future for my design I will consider utilizing different senses besides visual to make my work more accessible, such as the audio description. As a student who’s learning design, it’s good to have a sense of the norms in graphic design, then to break the rules and try different things by challenging out assumptions about identity and binarity. It’s interesting to be aware of the binary opposition of feminine and masculine style in the language of typography, which I wasn’t aware of before. It’s also super cool to learn about moon type ( alternative to braille) and the 3D printed book with hard edges. It’s a beautiful thing that we can touch things with eyes — we sense the feeling of velvet and I hope I can improve my design skills and create types that feels good to touch with dimensionality.
I enjoyed watching the documentary Helvetica since it offers me a new perspective living in this world — recognizing types and identifying them and it’d be fun to wander around New York City and recognize all Helvetica. I didn’t realize how close it was to us — NYC transit signage. According to designers featured in the documentary, Helvetica has qualities of better legibility, intelligibility, modernity, clarity and it is smooth, accessible, transparent, accountable, straightforward and neutral (neutralism — the meaning is in the context, not the typeface itself). I also like the metaphor that Helvetica is like “the perfume of the city” — something you don’t notice, but would miss if not there. It is interesting to see people’s changing attitude towards Helvetica within history with modernism, counterculture, postmodernism. Again, people have different taste and preference — some designers don’t like humanistic way of expression thinking text should just be neutral while others want to make type that has a personality and conveys mood. Choosing Helvetica is like choosing black or white clothes when you don’t know which color to choose — you’re not gonna stand out but it’s always the safe and won’t go wrong choice. I personally prefer to illustrate typeface to add the spirit to the whole poster but if I get stuck and don’t have inspirations I will always have Helvetica to go back to.
