wordmark
A Link to the Past
NYU Gallatin AlumniLink Mentor Program Brochure
I’ve been on a bit of a “ribbon lettering” kick lately. For this brochure/identity design, I was heavily inspired by a number of different sources, both old and new.
I wanted to conjure the notion of “link,” without using a cliché chain illustration in the process. The idea of roads and paths intersecting felt apropos to the concept of mentorship, and after doing some Wikimedia Commons research on such structures, I came up with a lettering style based on the look and feel of junctions or interchanges.
"Link" lettering, process
I wanted the composition of the piece to be simple and adaptable. For inspiration, I perused my copy of Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design (best textbook ever), and came across a simple-yet-gorgeous modernist poster by Lester Beall designed in 1937 for the Rural Electrification Administration. According to Philip Meggs, the poster was intended to be “understandable by illiterate and semi literate audiences,” and although my derivation was a bit more complex, I figured it would probably get the point across fairly easily to very literate university students.
After the basic concept was designed and approved, my brother Devin Korwin helped out with some last-minute Cassandresque shading, just as he had for the “Listening to Wine” poster.
The Connie Dial Web Presence
A few months ago I posted a teaser image from a project I was not yet ready to announce. The project has actually been complete for a little while now, so I can finally go into detail about it, as I am wont to do.
Connie Dial is author living in Los Angeles county, and spent 27 years with the LAPD. Her experience as a detective and working undercover gave her plenty of inspiration to write. With the release of her first big novel, she wanted to promote her work on the web. We built her site entirely in WordPress so that every aspect of it is easy to edit and manage.
Visually, it was decided early on that we would pursue a sort of “film noir and Art Deco meets Los Angeles Police Department” look. I gathered a collection of images that were on point; these included images from Dragnet, photos of building signage (including the iconic Broadway Hollywood sign), shots of the LA courthouse, and a selection of vintage police ephemera. I liked the wispy, foggy, “diffuse glow” feel; it lends itself well to the lighting and lens choices of old Hollywood films, and also to the smoggy feeling of how Los Angeles used to be (it’s actually not as bad anymore, save for all the brush fires we have here lately). In looking for commonalities amongst the images I gathered, I found a tendency toward the architectural detail of parallel lines and three-dimensional surfaces—the “streamline” look. It occurs also on the Beretta 9mm pistol—another cop tie-in. There’s also the motif of the sunburst, prominently used on the LAPD badge. Typographically, I drew inspiration from said badge, as well as vintage signage and newspaper design.
After presenting a slew of sketches, Connie selected a sketch that was derivative of a combination of an old Brown Derby menu and the Broadway Hollywood sign. I decided it would be well-worth the effort to create the logo as a 3D model of a rooftop sign, and to use the model as an element of a virtual landscape evocative of the zeitgeist I endeavored to recreate. In the process, I may have become a bit carried away, as I created a pretty realistic neon light system connected to the extruded letterforms. I wanted it to look as convincing as possible, and so I crafted the tubes in such a way that they could actually be manufactured—at least according to my extremely naïve knowledge of neon light design. It’s hard to tell from the resolution on the website, but when rendered up close with a glass material on the tubes, it looks pretty neat. This is why I blog about our projects—some of this stuff would never see the light of day otherwise.
Interesting note: in researching The Broadway Hollywood and its signage, I found that they had recently created a pretty nice looking website, including a slightly revamped version of their building’s roof logo. Even better: further research uncovered a new, custom typeface that was developed specifically for the building’s new branding. I love when businesses appreciate what they have, rather than trying to erase their history altogether. This is a terrific example of how things should be done—drawing direct inspiration from the building’s history and iconic visual motifs. Kudos.
Visit Connie Dial’s site at www.conniedial.com, and see this entry on the three steps ahead portfolio.
Creative campaigning
Monopoly Sheriff Campaign
While digging through my “archives” the other day, I came across a “business card” design draft I had created for a gentleman running for sheriff’s office. The project was an offshoot of a collaboration with my friend Scott Kidder—either he or the client had originally come up with the concept of using modified versions of Monopoly’s “Get Out of Jail Free” cards as a provocative souvenir for his campaign. Before the designs could be sent to press, though, the client dropped out of the race, and so these designs may have never seen the light of day. And to some extent I was a bit nervous about posting them, given the blatant rip-off of Parker Brothers’ intellectual property. But I’ve convinced myself at least that writing about them qualifies as editorial/academic/journalistic “fair use,” and that the cards were a parody to begin with, which also falls under fair use. But, just in case, ahem: I formally thank Parker Brothers in advance for its cooperation, and congratulate them on the excellent use of Avant Garde in their wordmark. [Grin.]
I thought at the time—and still think—that the design concept was a good one, since the goal in creating any sort of advertising campaign is to spark interest in those who see it. Regardless of how original it is to parody “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards, the idea is still a conversation starter. Isn’t that the point of graphic design altogether? To disseminate ideas in an effective and attractive way? I admit it was also a blast to try to replicate the rather utilitarian, 1930s metal typography used on the original Monopoly cards. It appeals to my eternal quest to capture the authentic, typographic zeitgeist of any chronological period that my design work references, but that’s a topic for another post. I’m also happy with the “Tom Lindsay for Sheriff” logotype, even when taken completely out of the Monopoly context. It feels iconic, I think, and certainly would have beaten the pants off of any other would-be-Sheriff’s campaign design. And this was back in the Dark Ages of 2006—eons before it was socially acceptable for American political campaigns to dabble with good design.
Parody, derivative work, and tooting-my-own-horn aside, I find that the most effective designs are the ones that feel inspired and thought-about. It’s easy to tell when a graphic design has some intellectual thought in it… when a designer is not thinking solely about aesthetics, but is using those tools at our disposal as a vehicle for driving a message. For that reason, it pays to plan—it pays to leave enough time in the creation of a design to think about what should be said. When the message itself is strong enough, good design follows.
Star Waggons logo makeover
Star Waggons logo, before and after
In the process of establishing a new look and feel for Star Waggons, we created a “look book” that served two purposes. Firstly, it contained our detailed analysis of the existing identity, including our thoughts on its origin, historical value, and efficacy. Secondly, the look book established our goals for the redesign, both verbally and through a scrapbook-style spread full of inspirational design materials.
The Star Waggons logo deserved particular attention. We devoted a page of the look book to the Star Waggons logo, which was designed originally in the late 1970s in emulation of the Star Wars wordmark. Since then, it had been painted on every Star Waggons movie trailer, and it was on every piece of their collateral from business cards to t-shirts and hats. But its execution, from a typographical standpoint, was sloppy, especially in the vector PDF form that I was given. My assumption had been that logo had probably degraded over time, after having been copied by hand over and over and eventually one of these copies was traced into Illustrator when it made sense to digitize it.
The whole “point” of the existing logo, as it were, was to emulate the deep perspective used in the opening of every Star Wars film. Unfortunately, in Star Waggons’ logo, lines which should have been parallel were askew, and the overall stroke weight and proportion of the letters was completely inconsistent. At the same time, the logo was extremely recognizable and popular under its own power; it made little sense to try to establish an entirely new brand theme when elements of the existing one had never been put to their full potential. The last thing the Star Waggons team wanted to do was to lose their logo—it’s quite dear to them. So our mission was clear: we had to give the logo a sensitive makeover, retaining its best features and refining away its worst.
We found inspiration for our task in the revered typographer Ed Benguiat’s rework of the original New York Times logo. Here is an excerpt from the Star Waggons look book, proposing our new direction:
Ed Benguiat’s revision of the New York Times logo.
A perfect example of this type of restoration is Ed Benguiat’s work for The New York Times in the 1970s. As an accomplished typographer, Benguiat recognized the value of The New York Times’ original logotype and was loathe to modify it beyond recognition. Instead, his version includes very subtle tweaks that increase the quality of the logo while respecting its original design. The end result is staggering; it feels as though Benguiat’s version is how the logo always was and how it always should have been. With some careful and respectful revision, we can achieve the same result with Star Waggons’ logo.
And so once we were given approval to move forward, we created the new logo design. It maintains the spirit of the original, but is cleaner, better proportioned, and more rhythmic by leaps and bounds. After delivering the redesigned wordmark, the client told us exactly what we had hoped: it felt to them as though the logo should have always looked this way.
A new Star Waggons employee t-shirt, one of the first items to bear the new logo.
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- Ed Rondthaler's Life with letters …as they turned photogenic
- House Industries: The Book
- Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State by Steven Heller
- Meggs' History of Graphic Design
- The Alphabet Thesaurus, Vol. 2
- The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
- The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook