Where’s Alex?

Project Brief: You’ve been asked to design a logo for a new Internet fashion magazine called Phashion. A logo design project is very content-oriented, so it needs a greater degree of research and preparation than most other design projects. 

Submission: During my research for this exercise, I stumbled across the St. Bride Printing Library here in London. Half of this small library has books related to different aspects of graphic design and could rival the internet as my main source for ideas and inspiration since, at a glance, it already has books on Lubalin (took photos of his work as archive), Bauhaus and Tschichold from your list. What affected me most during this exercise was the Jan Tschichold’s criticism to the typography of modern day logos, specifically about readability and proportions, in his book ‘Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering’.

The typeface of the first logo was called Burside created by (Walter) Haettenschweiler, 1969. This naturally Italic font, characterized by curves and sharp corners, has a unique ‘dynamic’ look that I thought would accurately represent internet-fashion collaboration. Traced from a book called Lettera (Vol. 4) to paper, I chose and reconstructed the lowercase letters to make use of the ascender and descender of letters ‘p’ and ‘h’ to help with readability amidst the tight kerning and ‘spelling error’. The subtitle was in uppercase to balance the logo’s lowercase and, combined with the light stroke effect, help differentiate and relegate its hierarchy. The added kerning was meant to fill negative space below the main title and to help with readability while reading uppercase letters since its shape is no longer differentiated by ascenders and descenders.

The typeface of the second logo was a culmination of a Sony logo design, a local bar logo design, and a typeface called ‘Limited View’ from a san serif display font compilation by Dan X. Solo. Although not as ‘dynamic’ as the first logo, geometrical curved ends dominate the top half while the butted ends help anchor/support the letters while it projects a more ‘technological’ outlook to the fashion theme emphasized by the name and front cover. The subtitle here works in the same opposing manner as compared to the first logo. Without any negative space left by descenders, the originally tight kerning distance was used to again relegate its hierarchy. Tight kerning also meant using lowercase to increase readability through letter shapes (ascenders/descenders) and to counter the more generous white negative space left by the main title.

The third logo, using Agency FB typeface, was my attempt to ‘break the mould’ and shape the main title using negative space left by the glow effect. Inspired by a CD cover (Pills, Rock Me), the logo is not only bold but will have colors from the photo covers come through the letters. The subtitle has the same logic behind the first logo.

Grade: 0
Hi Alex,
Well i say WOW, these are great, really strong, memorable, well drawn, perfectly balanced and big strong portfolio pieces for you. So, why the zero grade…spelling! whoops! You’re not the first!
I really like the first and second, but they are all very strong, so you can choose which ones work best with your magazine cover. Once you resubmit with the correct spelling, ill submit these to the student gallery.
Well done
Laura
ps
wonderful to read about your research and the books you found.

Sigh… sesat.

Re-submission: And all this time I thought I was pronoucing it wrongly in my mind. Might have been too caught up with the 1st ‘H’ during my first tracing that I missed the 2nd ‘H’ and subsequently the incorrect spelling was burned-in to memory while working on the next 2 logos. I apologise for the grave mistake.

Thanks for the encouraging comments though.

Grade: 100
HI Alex 
Great. Im submitting your logos to the student gallery. Good luck.
Choose the logo you like best for your magazine. Im partial to one and two.
Laura

Sigh… seronok.

If she’s talking about ‘that’ student gallery viewable by the public, I’ll put up a link.