Studio Brief 01 - Crit Review

Today we have had a group crit in which I demonstrated my inital ideas to a small group of my peers.

Below (see fig1) is a design sheet of my very first initial ideas for my logotype. I began by trying out different cases and kerning widths to see which worked best. I felt like the uppercase type with wide kerning gave off a very powerful, strong aesthetic but I wasn't sure this was a bit too masculine.
The tighter kerning made the type slightly softer but I still felt it looked too structured.
I didn't feel it worked with a mixed case as it made the word appear as two rather than one, which is not the desired effect I wanted. I combined the two 'S's to create a sense of flow and movement but discovered this looked too much like a $ sign. One of my favourite initial designs was the one with the capital 'M' as this gave the logotype a sense of power without being too 'in your face' as such.

The feedback I received during the group crit was surprisingly that generally people thought that the mixed case version worked best aesthetically, which shocked me as I personally disagree.

 fig1.


I also tried out some initial designs digitally, which made it easier for me to play around with kerning (see fig2 below). I immediately decided I personally preferred the logotypes in lowercase as I felt this was less harsh and more friendly and approachable. I also created a few variations that included lightening bolts in place of the 'S's and 'I' in the word, which I felt worked better in some examples than others.

During the group crit, I received feedback that the lowercase variations did look more approachable and friendly as I expected. They also said that I should experiment by removing the tittle from the 'I's and instead using the actual lightening bolts as the 'I'. Ben also suggested I make the bolts smaller so that they were less of an eyesore.


 fig2.


I also played around with form and layout and tried a few logotypes where the word was divided and placed into a particular structure. I don't think this worked very well as it made the word too disjointed and I also worry that this would not fit well onto products, labels, packaging etc. It was just  simply too impractical (see fig3 below).

The peers in my group crit also agreed with me by saying these designs would be quite hard to manipulate, but they did say that they quite liked  the large 3x4 uppercase version as it appeared quite striking and bold.

 fig3.

I am going to take the feedback from this crit into consideration and adapt my designs accordingly using my peer's feedback as a helping hand. This will help inform my designs and push them further in the right direction.