Merge Process Book One- Logo Design

Merge Process Book Logo Design Jennifer Losie

Mood Board

To start out the process

of creating an identity for the grad exhibition, I was looking at images and examples of what I could bring to the table. My strength is in interactive and web design so I was looking at layouts and examples of sites that could be applied to our class. I was noticing a strong theme of geometric shapes and bold colour systems that was catching my eye. Which if used effectively could be a great and vibrant way of showing off our work. I was also looking at poster design, brochures, environment and organizational systems that could be used in our designs.

Round One

ERGE My first stab at creating the logo for our exhibition, I focused on the word ‘Merge’ and decided to limit my colour palette to CMYK so I don’t get too distracted by selecting different colour systems. I was watching Rachel create these triangular mountains and I was thinking about how they resemble the negative space of the letter M so I took the CMYK colours and merged them together to create a overlapping type treatment.

I looked through synonyms for the word Merge and really like the sound and physical look of the word coalesce. I decided to try a few options with repeating the word in CMYK and see how the layering effect would work visually.

Some more layering styles. I also tried using linear values to represent the meaning of the word coalesce, which is to come together and form one mass or whole. So I thought the lines could come together and create this word.

Coalescence

Coalescence

Afterwards, I was brainstorming about using the O as a window to show the linear values and potentially artwork of the students.

Thinking about this made me focus more on how I could use this window as a design for a website, continuing to my last design which was to make the text a window and how you could show artwork or colours behind it. The typeface I used for all of the logos was Code Bold and Code Light. It created interesting but not overbearing geometric shapes without being too sharp.

Round Two: Code Bold & Century Gothic

After our class discussion we decided to go with Kaitlyn Proll’s logo idea with the name Merge. She had distributed a series of images in the circles and we were to come up with specific type treatments to better represent the identity we were developing. The first series I came up with was using Code Bold (a modernized version of Avant Garde) with Century Gothic underneath. I played with the kerning manually between the characters to give more of a feeling of them merging together. I focused on the M and the E to share stems giving a definitive illustration of merging. The rest of the characters I didn’t want quite as much overlapping so I kerned them to just overlap enough to still clearly read as their characters. The end results I am happy with, it gave me a modern type treatment that could still work with my idea of a window because it had enough weight to it that images could clearly show through the characters.

Round Two: Bodoni and Futura

The second typefaces I went with surprised me, normally I am not one who is attracted to serif typefaces but I ended up really favouring Bodoni and Futura combination. Bodoni being the main typeface. The fact that I chose something over Futura too is somewhat astonishing as it is my favourite typeface. Instead of having the stems of the letters merge together I decided to lightly merge the serifs which gave an interesting and rather “Vogue� look to it. It gives more of a class and elegance that I found myself really liking. The face still had enough weight to it that it definitely supported my window idea and with websites now it would be interesting to have a site that wasn’t focused around san serif or script typefaces. As it is all the trends now to overuse those, dare I even say, hipster style typefaces. I wanted to compliment the primary typeface with a sans serif typeface to balance the styles so I went with one that I knew would go well with it. Altogether it created a really interesting and classy combination that I really enjoyed.

Round Two: Applications

After going through the type treatments, I applied it to a very vague mock up of how I could utilize the logo, not literally, but in a visual language on a webpage. I broke down the elements of the logo into its three main parts; the circle, the type and the images.

I took those parts and made a black screen with my window text and had an image in the background, which could be used as a slideshow or video or single images. I then took the circles and made them into buttons (a little too bold for my liking but just to illustrate my point) so that they could be introduced as an organizational system in the layout. What I mean is by having them as; buttons, frames for images, symbols for each grad student, text frames, and the list could go on. By breaking down the system of how the logo function we wouldn’t have to worry about how small, large, or pixelated the logo would work as a whole and we could develop the identity further by going beyond the logo.

Round Three: Tertiary Typeface Century Gothic ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrst uvwxyz 11 pt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum

14 pt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum

Futura ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv wxyz 11 pt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate est laborum

14 pt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Brown ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR STUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv wxyz 11 pt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum

14 pt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum

Round Three: Final Result

After a lunch meeting with the class we came to a quick agreement over our tertiary typeface. We decided to go with one of the typefaces I pitched, Brown.

It pairs well with the first and second typefaces as it is more structured and is easily legible at reduced sizes. Which helped for poster and invitations. It also holds together on a screen since it doesn’t have precise curves and points it didn’t cause any stepping at different sizes on the website.

Final Applications: My Art

Social Media required artwork to put behind the merge logo so they could start promoting our show. I put together a few of my best pieces which included my silk screens and pastel pieces. I increased the size of the pieces and chose the most interesting textures of the pieces and tinted the word so it could be easily legible.