Week Nine | Nelson

Approaching this project, I wanted my design to show who I was rather than careers I’m looking into (though it could also somewhat reflect this). I’ve always been known as the “writer” and “art kid” so I wanted my logo to reflect both or either of these ideas; as I’m pursuing a potential career in art history, I thought going with an artistic theme would help reflect that. I didn’t want to only be associated with art, however, so I also developed a mark that had the aesthetic, graphic feel to it. I also knew I wanted the logo to be somewhat rough and organic looking, rather than perfectly structured and clean.

Type: For my typeface I used Apollo MT STD. I wanted a type that was script to go along with the curvy lines of the “paint” wordmark. Though the x-heights are still a bit larger that I really would have liked, it was a font that could be read despite being a script. I felt the wordmark was rather modern with its lettering, so I wanted a more traditional/older font for the text.

Visuals: I knew I wanted to use blue paint (C-99, M-76, Y-5, K), since it’s an aesthetically pleasing color as well as my favorite color. From there, I decided to make the paint brush orange (C-15, M-42, Y-57, K-3) using the idea of complementary colors (and I liked that it was SU colors). I wanted the painted letters to be rough, so I used dry brush 5; I also wanted to apply the idea of a circle, so I created the curves of the T to look a bit like a semicircle before fitting underneath the N. To make the paintbrush look a bit more realistic after tracing and filling with color, I put some “shine” marks on it in lighter colors (light orange: C-10, M, Y-62, K; light grey: CMY, K-33; dark grey: CMY, K-50); the light orange was used for the background of the business cards as well for the principle of similarity. Lastly, for the tip of the paint brush, I used a yellow (C-10, M, Y-62, K-0) then randomly applied blue over it. I knew I wanted to group the text on either side of the paintbrush to give a more complete look. Originally, I hadn’t planned on turning the text to lie against the paintbrush, but upon moving it around I thought it looked more natural lined up in that manner. Lastly, I wanted to spice up the stationery a bit, so instead of including all my contact information up top like for the business cards, I used the dry brush again to create random, rough streaks at the bottom and placed my number and email there. Overall, I think the logo achieved the vibe I was going for and is visually pleasing.