Logos, Fonts & Graphics

Much like the quests for everything else, the path starts about 20 steps before I assumed it did. Design is design is design… so that part never changes

Of course as a designer, we make pretty horrible clients, unless you come to terms with the idea that for your personal graphics – everything is in Beta. At least for me, the trick is going to be leaving the ‘bugs’ in and not getting stuck in a design loop that results in inaction. (I’ll let you know if I ever pull that off). 

The entire reason that we’re not 3-5 years more established right now is because of that inaction. Sucks right? Sitting around kicking yourself for being behind where you wanted to be, is akin to that worry/rocking chair analogy, so we learn & share by doing. 

Now personally – my workflow tends to ‘skip’ the sketching phase. That doesn’t mean that I avoid exploring the idea on the page. 

I’ve found, for me, that exploring ideas on the screen (whether it be Revit, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) that I can close the loop between analog and digital – and be that much closer to a usable & editable design result. 

It’s a double-edged sword sometimes – because it allows you to produce 1,000 nuanced variations on a theme – but then again, isn’t that really what we’re after as designers and what all the AI & Parametric discussion is about? Of course the downside is the design loop I mentioned, minus the Beta mindset. 

In an effort to stylize text, to give it that work-in-progress feel… the logo/icon swapped over to a more analog architectural sketch.

Then came the variations… 

Edit – Elementor slideshow isn’t working. Sorry about that. Had to rebuild that another way.

To sketch or not to sketch – that is the question. Either way – I think that I’ve got a handle on the ‘analog’ photoshop version (I’ve exported 20 variations on this for use in just about every occasion)… This morning was the ‘digital’ illustrator exploration. Flipping massing, playing with masking, watching a quick 30 second tutorial here and there & figuring stuff out. 

That’s been my m.o. since I spent my lunch hours sitting with a PC in the teacher’s office and a stack of AutoCAD 10 tutorials. Start hacking away and play with things until they break – then learn how to un-break them.  

All I’m doing here is playing with fonts, color, orientation of top-weighted versus bottom-weighted… I’m sure each one of these will end up some place.

Either way – it all goes back to workflow. I figured something out, added to the skill set, and created a library of things that I can reuse for future editing and projects.

I believe that’s one of the primary benefits of approaching things the way that I do.

I didn’t just make things once. I made things with a myriad of variety that can (and likely will) get edited, reedited, beaten to within an inch of their lives, and if I need something in a hurry – now there are starter-solutions rather than yet another design problem.

It’s how I begin making:

• Research,
• Design,
• Build all the parts,
• Assemble.

Its my way of not only solving the immediate need – but making sure that the next time I need to do something – I have a library to draw from. I can’t do that with a pile of trace paper.

I will say the iPad Adobe Suite is a pretty nice way to get sketch forms into the digital realm.

Cheers.

JM