OUGD503 - Rachel Anne Waring Logo & Board design

I was asked to design some presentation boards for a Surface Pattern designer. She had a collection of work that she wanted presented so that it could be sent to possible employers and clients.

The was a maximum of 10 boards and they had to be A4 landscape.

Rachel had already decided on the majority of the content so I had to lay it out. We initially met up and discussed what she wanted and I began to make some initial sketches. We also decided on the pages, their order and their contents.

Whilst working on the layouts of the boards I was asked to develop a logo as her existing logo was just her name in Times.

Boards

For the boards I produced several different possible designs. Each used a different grid structure and layout to provide a variety of options so that when I took the design to her we could discuss which were the best options and move on from there. *Different layout designs include some varied content and are not all identical.

For the first layout I used a very loose 6 column grid and was really just experimenting with different possibilities and what way the information looked the best on the page. The logo and information was positioned to the bottom right and right aligned. This was done as the majority of the content, or the larger images were positioned on the left so it balanced the board.

The decision to lay the pages out as DPS worked with some ideas and layouts, however, it made it difficult to produce work that flowed and was consistent throughout all of the boards. Some content was much harder to layout than others; this was due to its shape and how much content there was for each board. This also made consistency quite difficult.

As with the previous design some layouts work, however, there are some boards where the content does not fit with the layout. This causes a consistency difficulties. For this layout I initially used a three column grid and adapted it to make the content more interesting.

After a discussion with Rachel, we both decided that using the 4 column grid worked well, leaving the 4th column free for the logo and any written information. This design is very similar to the design that was chosen and used for the final boards.

The final layout used a 12 column grid as a guide and filled the space accordingly with the content. I wanted to break the content up so that it was all visible and each board had impact, however, I didn't want to overcrowd them. To create impact without overcrowding or making the boards look bare, I aligned all the content to the left and limited how many columns the content could fill so that there was breathing space around the logo as this is important information.

Logo

After some initial discussion about the logo, we set some restrictions, specifically on the content and what needed to be said. The logo itself could just be her initials (RAW) but she also wanted her full name (Rachel Anne Waring) and Surface Pattern Designer included.

I wanted to produce something that was sophisticated  could hold its own and stand out in the industry, whilst also reflecting Rachel as a person and designer.

I began the process by sketching a variety of different options, making them as different as possible. From the beginning I had a concept that I wanted to push. Rachel’s initials spell out raw, which was something that I thought was fantastic. Not only did this make life easier on my part it also already had an energy and impact that a logo requires. Another element of her initials that was very useful was the ‘A’ and the ‘W’. When written in upper case, the angles are very similar – if not the same – and this is something I wanted to play with.

I had a personal favorite amongst my sketches and when discussing the logo with Rachel, this was fortunately also her favorite.

In the initial sketch I had removed the crossbar on the ‘A’ to give the logo a rawer feel and as an attempt to make it stand out. Although I had produced it without I wanted to see what the ‘A’ would look like with different crossbars in different places.

From this experimentation I decided that the ‘A’ looked more interesting without the crossbar and was still readable which was the most important thing.

I then proceeded to draw a conjoined ‘AW’. With this drawn out, I realized that several elements didn’t look right – this was because the angles were not correct.

Having redrawn the ‘AW’ accurately so that all the angles worked, I was still unsure about the lack of cross bar so again experimented with various possibilities.  The different possibilities included the cross bar only through the ‘A’, the crossbar through the ‘A’ and the ‘W’ but not overlapping and the crossbar progressing right through the ‘A’ and the ‘W’ with an overlap on each side.

With the ‘AW’ decided I no needed to draw out a ‘R’ that complimented and worked with the ‘AW’. I again drew some accurate initial sketches to try and get a feel for the letter and what would work best with the existing ‘AW’.

To start with, I could not get the ‘R’ to fit with the design of the other letters as I needed it to be a certain width (without it looking short and fat) and dissect at the level where the crossbar would be. The problem was overcome by changing reflecting the exact qualities of the ‘AW’. The ‘R’ started with a thick stroke and was predominantly this stroked apart from the stem. I experimented with various stem positions before making the decision that this also needed to be a thicker stroke.
 

Having redrawn it with the correct stroke widths there was still something missing and it did not work with the ‘AW’ as well as I had hoped. After a discussion with some of my peers, the decision was made that serifs were needed on the ‘R’ so that it was in keeping with the rest of the logo. 

I again initially tested this idea before it was decided upon.

Now that each letter of the logo had been decided on, it could be drawn out in full before being finally digitized.

With the logo now complete I needed to find a typeface that complimented my hand-drawn type for Rachel’s full name and occupation. The font that I chose was Futura.

This is still an ongoing project and have recently been asked to produce a business card for her and other printed collateral.