May 1st, 2019
Hello everyone and welcome to another one of my blog posts! If you saw on the beginning of this post that it is officially May...that’s right...I’m graduating from college very soon! As much as I am sad/eager to go, my new adult life and finding a job within my field is going to be tough. I have had endless conversations with various professors with the art department, including, Professor Brian Pirman. I’ve had Professor Pirman since I was a junior and have taken multiple graphic design courses needed for my major such as: computer graphics, design for the web, advertising design, and have even emailed and stopped by his office countless times for meetings, questions, and to make sure I was on the right track with projects and assignments.
If you have looked at various pieces of work on my portfolio site, you can see some work that I have done for Professor Pirman’s classes and various other student works from my four years at SNC.
In continuation with this blog post’s theme, I’m going to be sharing information about personal identity and logos! I am personally a massive fan of logos, self-identity, and branding oneself. That would explain why when I graduate, I want to look for a graphic design job that specializes in advertising and creating various logos for companies.
In one of Professor Pirman’s classes, ART 335 Advertising Design, our first task was to create a logo that we believed represented ourselves as designers, artists, and would start to get our names out as graphic designers. Starting off the class, Professor Pirman talked about the importance of a good logo and how it will make a great designer stand out from a good to an average or even a poor graphic designer. Pirman noted on how logos that have been around for several years, such as McDonald’s golden arches, Playboy, and even car companies have multiple years of success because an individual (if they have any familiarity with graphic design and logos or even if they don’t) are easily able to recognize any part of the logo. My classmates and I actually were given various parts of logos and were asked if we could recognize the logo based on color, shape, and design. Although, some of us struggled with recognizing some of the logos, some were extremely easy to point out since we have seen them for so long and we have a familiar memory with them. Below are various examples that our professor shared with our class.
Some famous logos my professor had shown in class.
For the first task that we had to work with for this class was to create a logo that would become the face of our personal identity. This means that this logo that we would be coming up with and working with, would be the start of branding ourselves and getting familiar with corporate identity. It also was a kick-start of how we wanted to be perceived online, in person, and associated with our work.
When creating or starting a logo or branding yourself, it is important to ask yourself what you want your initial client or viewer to see when they see the logo that will represent your work. It is important to consider: text, color, style, and sizing - much like how you would when you are creating any other type of graphic, illustration, or project that would vary in size. Our task was to create various roughs of logo ideas and then have a critique in class to pick the strongest. Once the strongest was decided, one would continue on to apply their logo type to various mediums - we could apply it to a tee shirt, hat, business card, whatever one desired!
After creating my first logo, I applied it to the following items. A hat, business card, sticker or enamel pin, a tee shirt, and various other items to see what it would look like! For my beginning logo, I wanted to create something bubbly and that resembled the 1970s (since it’s my favorite time era). I focused on just using my first and last initials since I have a longer name and contained them within a circle. I tried to draw letters or create a type font that was similar to my natural handwriting to give it a more authentic feel.
I had a hard time coming up with this assignment and struggled for a couple weeks to come up with something to give my professor. I focused on different colors, shapes, line, typography, symbols, and signs to try to come up with something that would fit for who I was as a graphic designer. I think my original logo worked for the assignment for this class, but I wasn’t satisfied.
Various roughs of possibilities for my logo design.
Below are images of my original Madeline Gassner logo applied to various items.
My original Madeline Gassner logo
However, almost a year later I decided to change my logo to something more modern, edgy, and something that had fit with my artwork and aesthetic. I really am interested in geometric design, pattern, and shapes. Simple line work and repetitive scientific-esc patterns have been very trendy and modern for the past couple of years in graphic design. I chose to do something more modern because I believe that it would give me a stronger notice as an almost college graduate. I even received positive feedback from Professor Pirman about my new logo and how much stronger it was.
I decided to keep it much simpler with my color choices with just black and white because it’s easier to put with artwork that I have created. My new prism logo easily works as a watermark and can be recognized as a piece of my artwork. It also works in different ways.
My new logo face with my new business cards.
In the end, a logo should speak for who you are as a person, a business owner, and should represent your work as a whole. My original logo wasn’t doing that so a nice new take on my icon was ideal to grow as a graphic designer and college graduate. I truly think that my new logo front (when applied to various aspects like business cards) will help me land a job in the future and build up my experience as a graphic designer.
Thanks for checking out another blog post! Stay tuned to see what I'm tackling next!
- Madeline