By erich on February 9, 2012
As I adventure through the odd subjects that intrigue me enough to imagine how I would brand them, like meditation, puppet theater, entomology or antique radios, I’m met with what amounts to days of research learning how these subjects are turned into legit businesses, and how only a few of those businesses end up succeeding. Branding may very well be part of that success quotient, but the actual skills behind the delivery of these services and products…that’s where I get amazed.
Some things we just take for granted in the common era. Simple tools like pots and pans, hammers and nails, mirrors and brushes. Most products like these in my home are made by gigantic companies that make 1M other thing-a-ma-jigs, homogeneously combining their surplus of materials, simplistic designs and the lion’s share of market value to all but exterminate smaller craft companies who focus on a much more narrow spectrum of production. There’s nothing wrong with expansion and diversification of course, it’s the classic American business tactic, but what it can sometimes do to an industry is weed out opportunities for ingenuity and enterprise.
This month I’m focusing on a client who took an interesting path on his way to developing a brand for a common tool. He started out as a graduate of mechanical engineering in the U.S., but afterwards took a drastic turn in life to indulge in his true dream of traveling to Europe and become a chef. This is the kind of guy who succeeds at everything he does, and after 10 years of success in the international food industry he saw yet another opportunity to combine his mechanical skills with his culinary love to develop his own line of cutlery. His name is Harrison Clyve, and as he began this new venture into the world of knife production he knew that if he respected his idea then it should come with a voice and face that captured his vision.
Clyve is the name he’s given his company. His designs are still in prototype stage, but he’s prepared with a launch to many home and kitchen supply stores that he’s brokered deals with over the past year to get his knives on the shelf once they’re in production. Without going into the details of its knife designs, Clyve has provided a creative brief that details their goals for standing out to the “budding chef.” They offer affordable alternatives for the highest-end cutlery while providing support for safe and correct knife handling. Though they do have an elite line of chef’s knives, they recognize the competition for such has been crafting cutlery for centuries and it’s a goal of theirs to target a wide blanket of skill level as opposed to the finest in the industry.
Clyve’s offered five words to help characterize their brand
• Comfortable
• Piquant
• Safe
• Culinary
• Novice
Deliverables for the project include a logotype, a business card, and an impression upon the cutlery. There’s an interesting notion for the visuals that involves multiple iterations of a graphic, perhaps representing kitchen knife storage, an indication of actual product and product packaging, or some other diversified, or “diced” aspect to the branding. This is all something to ponder for now, first up is a little time learning about the industry and competitors, then onto inspiration and genesis. Quite a bit to get done in a month, better get cooking.
Posted in Clients, Clyve | Tagged application, Client Begin, design, product |
By erich on February 1, 2012
History began with the goal to bring a tattoo parlor into a different look than your hole-in-the-wall tramp stamp factory in a seedy part of town. That being said, it’s also important to remember your audience, and the person who wants to inject ink into their skin for their entire life usually approaches a business with too stylish a brand as over-confident, corporate or without the grime that comes with real experience. Where they meet in the middle is in the personalization of the process—the privacy of the tattoo.
The logo for the client evolved from visuals that stretched the meaning of personal history into a patchwork of interpretations, literally traveling down the path of stitching and threading together the typography. Although stitches definitely came with the grit befitting the industry the threads were throwing the identity off, and the visuals were not coming out attractive (even in a grisly way). What developed was the notion of a monogram or signature, an imprint that defined their character in a unique interlocking stamp. With much experimentation in the assembly of the seven letters I came to an array that distorted the norms of typography, fastened their architecture for unification and scoured the strokes to communicate that the parlor was weathered, experienced and worldly.
Intentionally dirty and flawed, the reproducible vector form takes on the characteristics of penmanship drawn some time ago. The typeface that would be used to accompany the brand is Aldine Roman 401 by Francesco Griffo in 1929 (reproduced by Aldus Manutius here in 2000). The face reflects the antiquity but is contrasted by the mechanical adherence to geometry in the logo monogram.
While History has discarded some of the furnishings of the industry standards like portfolios filled with butterflies and tribals or the hallmark neon sign, some things still simply speak the language of the trade. Things like leather, rock & roll, and the color black. The shop gets a facelift then, and the owner considers her business serious enough to imprint it not only on the signage by the steps, but on her own body and soul. Intense, dedicated, passionate—that’s what the business is about, because after all, it’s a personal history, it’s your private personal business.
Posted in Clients, History | Tagged application, branding, concept, Final Work, process, sketch, tattoo, typography |
By erich on January 27, 2012
Sorry, the possible puns with this client are endless I feel. History started in December and I’ve dragged it into this January because the holidays and the winter always rain down mayhem on my work. Regardless I’m becoming more and more pleased that I’ve done so. Some projects only develop when given enough legroom. I’m a quality over quantity guy—I also believe good design, like a good spirit, only gets better with time.
The previous concept sketch has been traced and drawn over and over, and after battling the urge to go directly to Illustrator to finalize the logo, I’ve decided that I’d rather have the artwork produced by hand and then translated into a digital format. The mechanical tone of vector shapes kept turning me off to the design, it wasn’t raw or natural enough. I didn’t return all the way back to the drawing board, but ink and paper was clearly an intrinsic aspect to the client, being a tattoo parlor, and comes with it an irregularity that I not only enjoy, but find particularly relevant.
I was inspired by this short film about the late Doyald Young the other day, an esteemed typographic designer, and am only humbled by his true mastery of hand drawn lettering. I’m not sure I have the absolute patience and intense adherence to formal details to reward my logo with such a beautiful process as his, however, Monthly Brand is about learning. I’ve been tracing letters since college, but nothing like Young traces. I can only see my skills improving by continuing to strive for his level of vision and craft.
On to a little about the design of the logo for History, I’ve posted here some of the iterations and how it’s developed. I’ve chosen this direction and this style of typography for several reasons. The irregular letterforms do not adhere to formal conventions, but I like that, I find that it individualizes the symbol; it’s a custom interlocking of letters, and can be considered rather personal, a trait that was fundamental for the client. There is a clockwork to the arrangement as well—all forms uniquely operating and attached together, to the point of perhaps seeing the “machine” as a whole before fully recognizing all of its independent parts. This bridges nicely the goals of heralding the visceral and organic nature of branding oneself with artwork that can only represent them and their history while communicating the more literal notion that events (in history) have a mechanical behavior, and that they must have been arranged this way in order for the present to be real. It’s rigidity to a grid further locks the pieces into a system that grounds and celebrates this, the letters themselves are almost events in an apparatus of experience.
While I’ve already discussed choosing the direction as a form of monogram, I realized that no font can reproduce such a thing. They may be inspirations, the typographical designs of others, but as Doyald Young reminded me in the film, one crafts the design of letters over simply choosing one of over 100,000 fonts in the world because it is customized, it is wholly unique, like a tailored suit or a window of stained glass. In this logo design, the distinct nature of my hand, my craftsmanship, with all its imperfections, is impressed into the graphic. But it does not come without a sense of figure that represents the client—its mildly unidentifiable order, its optimistic and stretching spine of the central I, its cascading left stems of the H, T and R, its arrogance of a perfectly circular O, and its whimsical summary of a coiled terminal in the y. These are all purposeful choices that I believe give it character that both retain a meaning in the word History while representing an attractive graphic for a tattoo-bound audience, all wrapped up in the solidarity of a monogram that can only bring with it one identity.
The next step is to translate it to a digital format and apply it to the needs of the company. They’ll need a sign for their parlor, perhaps a flyer or business card, but if the owner enjoys it as much as me, perhaps there’s a reserved space on her own skin that deserves this next step in a blooming tattoo business.
Posted in Clients, History | Tagged calligraphy, compositions, designers I like, drawing, illustrator, process, sketch, tattoo, typography, work ethic |
By erich on January 16, 2012
I’ve been clogging my own process without pressing it on the blog, so this is a bit of a deposit of sketches, ideas and paths that are shaping up to be the identity for the tattoo parlor History.
The stitching, the blackletter, the calligraphy, all ideas that haven’t worked out for some reason. Stitches, although an interesting idea, I feel is too far departed. Calligraphy just seems expected, no matter how I cut it. I then went on a small journey where I thought that the effect of drawing on your own skin was an interesting visual. When developing a single-line typographic logo, I came up with some intriguing letterforms. This would be drawn on the skin, in ink so that the darkness spreads into the cracks, creating a sort of fractured and thorny effect. The effect was meant to be recognizable as ink drawn on skin, a natural exposition of tattoo artistry. The continuous line idea was meant to cover the concept of history’s tendency for repetition, and singular path.
More and more I’ve drifted from these ideas. While decent thought exercises and provocative routes for graphic identity, I’m still not sure they really represent the company, or really, tattoo at all. I’m trying to think in context as well—this identity will most likely be on a boutique sign, probably dark with knocked out type. Though the temptation to produce the continuous line concept into a neon sign is high, we decided early on that History was attempting to transcend that representation of parlors. They’re looking to be a more comfortable, though dark and intense setting.
I am growing more and more fond of my current direction however, though I am reluctant to continue with my own personal style affectations. This concept centers around History as a monogram of sorts, though not through acronyms of course. I was pondering personal experience, personal identity, and recalled a gallery show I was at just recently at the Swann Auction Galleries, where several Dürer prints were auctioning. I hadn’t seen a Dürer print in some time, and was instantly drawn into his world, not just by virtue of his line quality and imagination, but, as a graphic designer magnetized to typography, his signature monogram. I remembered how powerful and personal it was, and so I began drawing the logo for History in a fashion that evoked signature, experience, and unity.
The collection of the letters began to become symmetrical as my influence over them grew, but then I also remembered how unique something feels when an asymmetry brings conviction to the form. I am, but probably shouldn’t be, a tad worried about how close the forms are to the previous client, Haiku Den, specifically the bracketing of the letterforms. I just feel it brings it antiquity and some sense of dark reflection, possibly nostalgia even. From a distance it may confound, it may intrigue, it may even bring a little apprehension. This is perfect for the audience seeking to mark their body with past events and special passions. The following are sketches of where I’m driving History now, and a refinement composition at the end. If you have thoughts on them, let me know.
Posted in Clients, History | Tagged application, calligraphy, inspiration, monogram, process, research, sketch, typography |
By erich on January 12, 2012
This is the part of the year when everything grows cold. Inspiration, workflow, new business, performance, motivation…snow. Respite and revelry usually takes over the last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January for me, making for a rather dark bruise on my Monthly Brand schedule. Last month’s brand, History, a boutique tattoo parlor seeking to get at the root of personal experience, has frozen a bit. This month’s brand will have to germinate amid the thaw and restart the party. The Monthly Brand Cometh, as it were.
I try to pick endeavors on this blog that I also have interests in, that excite or bewilder me. Though I love coffee and cafes, and very well may attempt branding such a thing in the future, it’s somewhat expected. Branding a good coffee shop is a standard exercise for sure, but this month I’m going to be looking for something a little different, something a little more salient. I also try to choose brands that are masculine, distinctive, or sharp. The word sharp keeps coming to mind, and I’ve used it several times in descriptors for clients. It means so many things to me, and this month I want to take sharp to the next level. Here’s a hint:
Posted in Monthly Brand | Tagged motivation, sharp, work ethic |
