Where’s Alex?

Just some of the things that’s keeping me sane…

Coffee Book Cover & Chapter Page Design

“The only thing i would suggest is for you to put MoMA address on one line and perhaps a bit smaller. This way Liad’s name will take the focus.”

Embossed Logos Design

 (Supplied)

My very own, modified a logo I created for my Illustrator Basics course exercise. After selecting and enlarging several colored boxes to represent pixels, I embossed them with 3 different depths to physically represent the pixels’ inspired nature.

This was the follow-up assignment after designing the Phashion magazine logo.

A bold concept and different from the others, but was deemed too ‘piece meal’, fragmented with no real image focus for a magazine cover.

On the right track, but needed to make the Phashion logo larger and the dress to fill more of the page.

Better, but still need to make the logo larger and its glow more transparent.

“I think you’ve got it, Alex.”

Now these are the sort of advice that you get from a creative director in a graphic design firm. 

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.

Another assignment, this time to create a retro advertisement design using as little modern technology as possible, using pre-digital graphic designer methods i.e. no Illustrator or Photoshop. Just rulers, blade, calculators, paper and glue. And here it is…

This design cost me a ‘bomb’!

Return bus trip to Apple Store (for slogan’s font): £1.60
Yellow card (for base/background): £0.30
2 page of black and white printing (for positional concepts): £0.20
3 pages of colour printing (for images and text): £3.00
Gluestick (for pasting images and text): £1.99

And things that I bought but didn’t use in the end.

2 dozen white card (for base/background): £2.99
2 cards, light blue and orange (for base/background): £0.60

Grand total: £10.68
And who is going to pay for all this?

The logo, slogan and text were not my ideas so don’t blame me for them. Only realised a mistake I made with the position of the mother-child picture as I was about to submit the assignment. Too late, and not to mention costly, to redo everything.

Taking a break from writing about my sad story of job searching and share what kept me busy last week.

Recently completed an assignment to use a famous name in a magazine advertisement for a documentary and communicate the personality or contribution using just typography (letters) without any illustrations or photographs.

Click…

Bob Geldof organized Live8 concerts all around the world to call on leaders at the G8 Summit 2005 in Gleneagles to ‘Make Poverty History’ in Africa. I attempted to express the concepts of boldness and determination during the process of organizing the events. The heavy Haettenschweiler typeface was meant to communicate these concepts as it had thick strokes and higher vertical proportion. The close tracking and black-white contrast of his name helped add impact to his boldness and message of rich and poor divide. The close tracking also helped reduce the gap between ‘G’ and ‘8’ to maintain the link established by the same grey tone to represent his influence on the G8 Nations Summit.

Grade: 100 points
Hi Alex,
Great! i get the 8 now. this is bold and very strong with a very nice composition. Well done.
Congratulations on completing the course. perhaps i see you in my graphic design class?
Good luck with all you do in design
All the best
Laura

Although I had completed the course, the instructor was impressed enough with my other piece (didn’t quite like this one, not as strong as the 1st) that she asked for it to be submitted so it can be graded.

Click…

Ellen MacArthur made fastest solo sail around the world. I attempted to express her character and her successful feat. The heavy typeface of Century Gothic for ‘Ellen’ was used to represent the vastness of the blue sea she faced in her journey. The sectioning of ‘Ellen’ allowed space to include an element from among many challenges, waves. Apart from having the unique ‘A’ shaped like a sail, the Santa Fe typeface had the same optimistic feel that kept her going throughout her journey. Colored in the same orange as the B&Q Trimaran, I attempted to contrast it with the blue of a greater area to create an isolated (i.e. solo) look. Her official record is 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes 33 seconds. I didn’t have this note during my composition. Sorry.

Grade: 100 points
Hi Alex,
This poster looks great, you really did a good job. Now you have two very strong portfolio pieces
Laura

Ah… so happy!