Well it’s definitely a long time since I last wrote anything here… but here I am again. I am now fully recovered and have gone back to work; yesterday I went back in to Uni for the first time, since my operation, for a tutorial with Michael.
We are now nearly half way through the Realisation module, which is rather alarming, and will soon need to be putting together an interim presentation of what I have covered and achieved so far, so this seems to be an ideal point at which to sort my thoughts out and organise everything.
I have continued working with the circles, but at the same time I have been working on my company logo. There is a requirement for me to have a portfolio before the end of this module and ideally all the images in my portfolio should have the Whimsy & Quirk logo in a corner. This being the case, perhaps I should start by telling you about my logo design.
Originally I had been thinking of designing circles as part of the logo design but they developed into something bigger, but the designs filling the circles would work just as well filling a letter as a circle, so that was my starting point. I wanted to use text the represented the two individual words ‘Whimsy’ and ‘Quirk’ and originally I planned to use writing samples of two good friends – I felt that it would add to the quirkiness if it almost looked hand written – so I asked my friend Nina to write ‘Whimsy’ because her writing has a very pleasant dreamy and whimsical quality to it…
Tim wrote ‘Quirky’ because I feel that his writing is a quirky mix of Arty, curly and also strong and confident…
I thought that these very different writing styles would represent Whimsy & Quirk perfectly. I scanned the words into my laptop and opened them in Illustrator and then drew around them, but when it came to form a ‘clipping mask’ which should cut the shape out of a pattern it would not work. I spent 4 days trying to make it work, getting more and more frustrated on each day until… I gave up! My next best option was to download suitable fonts, to which end I went on http://www.ultimatefontdownload.com (consulted on 26/3/11), paid $19.99, which was approximately £13 and downloaded 10,000 that are licensed for commercial use – perfect. The combination of letters, that I chose to form the logo, look like this…
Whimsy & Quirk
Whimsy is made up of W in Delta Hey Max Nine font, HM and Y are written in Penshurst font - bold, I used the Casua font and S has been written in Birmingham font.
Quirk has been created by using the Q of Quigley Wiggly font, because it reminds me of Tim’s Q, the U and R are made up of You are what you eat font and the I and K have been written in Cream and sugar font.
After having decided upon how the logo should be written I then had to decide upon the pattern designs that would be behind the letters. I managed to incorporate an ‘Op Art’ design, my clematis design from the Experimentation and Feasibility module, some cherry blossom that I took at photo of, a touch of Art Deco inspiration and also some traditional basket weave – the final result looks like this…
I am pleased with my final logo design. It has gone through several stages, including one that had very wild colours and may have alienated half my potential clients before they had looked at my work!
Whilst I sort out my mind and what I need to do and in what order I am also preparing to go on a print workshop, so I need to work out a design that can translate into a screen print to be printed onto fabric – potentially for the Lloyd Loom seat cover – so I need to do some serious thinking about what I wish to achieve. This is my most urgent job on the ‘to do’ list. So I will get on with that and then tell you some more of my plans. In the meantime I would be interested to hear any comments you have to make about my new logo design.
