Hello and thank you for being part of J465 this semester. Together, we will undertake a series of projects and assignments that are meant to build your abilities as designers and increase your expertise in the core Adobe programs that are the tools of the trade. You will be designing logos, illustrations, layouts and animations that will showcase your creative vision and your unique personal style.
You will use this site throughout the semester to post your work, as well as descriptions of your creative process and analyses of the finished products. As authors, you may post additional thoughts and reactions any time you see fit. As part of the class, you will also be designing and maintaining your own J465 website, showcasing your project and exercise work. To read the full syllabus for J465, please visit our syllabus site at www.stevelayton.net/j465/s24.
Good luck — and once again, thanks for being here.
When I was coming up with ideas, I knew that I wanted to create the company logo related to an animal. The wolf, an animal often misunderstood and feared, embodies the qualities that I liked and thought would be great as a company representation. Wolves are intelligent, adaptable, and fiercely loyal to their pack. They possess a keen sense of intuition and a deep connection to the environment around them. I believe that the wolf and the hypothetical values of the company are very similar and based off each other. In a company, it is good when it tries to be intuitive in the approach to publishing, understanding the unique needs and goals of each project. Overall, the idea of a wolf is something that holds a strong meaning behind it and can represent the company very well. By choosing a wolf, the publishing company can convey a message of power, creativity, and intelligence, with a strong visual identity that stands out in a competitive market.
This company was inspired by the character “Dazai” from the series Bungo Stray Dogs. That i recommend watching. Dazai represents being smart, witty, and unpredictable and so many more and that’s exactly what we are. We hope to collaborate with you very soon.
For the Logo project, I really was aiming to create a logo that is timeless, clean and sophisticated. I wanted to target creatives looking to further their work with Blue Boot Publishing Co. and used color, a design and typography to do so. The name Blue Boot stood out to me because of its alliteration and simplicity. I figured there were a lot of ways to go about making a logo to match the brand name, but I wanted to do a play on the two “b’s.” Rain-boots seemed to be the perfect image, and when I reflected a boot vertically, the image reflected the perfect amount of symmetry. I had a difficult time deciding whether I wanted the boots to be filled with color and be more illustrative, or to have them outlined and more of a silhouette. To make my decision, I moved forward to figure out and decide which typography to use. In order to have a clean and modern look, Broadacre stood out to me. An outline of the boots felt the most compatible with the stroke weight of the typography I wanted to use. In the variations of the logo, I wanted the boots to be recognizable to customers without text, and I feel as though that was the result. This project challenged me. I would have loved to create a more miraculous logo, but in order to be recognizable and easily transferred, I felt as though blue boot would be the perfect stamp for creative minds to recognize and place upon their work, when published.
I think an additional detail I could have added maybe is a water splash or puddle under the boots to make extremely clear that they are in fact rain-boots. The deep blues and clean white communicated the clean and modern look, and I feel as though paired well with the graphic.
When I first started thinking of ideas for my logo, I knew I wanted to involve my last name sweet. So at first, I began with just the name Sweet Publishing. I knew i wanted it to have a simple and sleek pen stroke look to it to tie into the publishing brand. Right off of the bat, I had the idea of incorporating a wrapped candy within my logo to represent the “sweet”. From here I made a couple of sketches, where I noticed I could make the middle part of the candy be identifiable as the S in sweet.
After a couple of sketches, I realized I was envisioning the candy wrapper ends to emerge into something else as well, which was hearts. So i ultimately decided to have my publishing company be named Sweetheart Publishing.
I once again made several sketches until I was happy with a final product. This took a lot of trial and error. I wanted the hearts to be positioned a certain way…But really creating the circled candy in the middle was the hardest part because I wanted all of my pen strokes to be even and curved WHILE STILL create some sort of an S shape as well. I ended up angling the ends of the hearts to match up together as well so it gave it an idea of continuation. Finally last thing I did in my illustration was draw out a little quill at the end of the pen stroke to make it seem as if it had drawn it out, tying in the publishing title for my company.
I used a cursive handwriting font along with a more formal italic font because I wanted to match the elegance of the design itself but I think in future alterations of this logo I would look into changing the fonts the fit a more simple and elegant look because right now it seems to be a bit whimsical.
I wanted to keep this logo very sleek, elegant, and modern so I came up with a pretty neutral palette although honestly I can see myself changing it now to maybe just being the red color rather than the beige as it adds a little more pop. Overall though, I am very happy with what I was able to create and really enjoyed this process.
For the logo project I knew I wanted to mold my company around the idea of book-to-screen adaptations. I’m a big reader and I always love seeing them come to life on screen, which prompted the idea of a publishing house that specializes in that process.
The branding of the company comes from the act of writing a script. The bright white and classic black of writing and rewriting, as well as the red of typos, edits, and mistakes. The name of the company came from the satisfaction of finishing a project and typing that last word, and especially that last letter. I played around with the idea of separating the words and the capitalization, but ultimately the look of them together felt right.
I knew I wanted the logo to be stripped-down and simple. The icon of the text-cursor fit right in to the branding, and hopefully will be useful down the line when it comes to the animation. The font itself is the industry standard font for scriptwriting, which felt like an obvious pick.
If I were to make any changes or additional variations in the future, I think I would like to make a few more illustrative logos. Although I love the simplicity and scalability of this version, I do think a more intricate logo could be interesting for special occasions.
Overall I was very happy with LastLetter’s branding and I’m excited to continue bringing it to life throughout the course.
I created Sunset Publishing because when I think of reading, I think of something very relaxing and tranquil. Watching sunsets is something I like to do in my free time to decompress and appreciate the sky’s beauty, just like how when you read, you appreciate the narrative written by the author. Because of this, I made my publishing company called Sunset Publishing to publish books that make the reader relaxed and carefree and help them escape life’s stressful moments.
While thinking of the concept, I mapped out some ideas on paper to somehow create a logo that incorporated a sunset as well as a book or a bookmark. I found it difficult to come up with a clever way to incorporate both ideas into one image, but eventually I came up with a sunset that is made out of the book pages if the book was held upside down. I wanted something simplistic and modern as well to emphasize that the books published by this company are not over the top or super bold in their cover design.
I had trouble choosing a typography that went well with the sunset. Originally, the sunset had rigid ends (not curved), but I wanted something more whimsical and carefree, so I rounded those corners. After doing that, I thought I should have a typeface that has rounded edges to correspond to the roundness of the sunrays. I think the type I chose works out well and looks like it goes along with my logo. The colors I chose were orange and blue because I thought that most sunsets have orange in them and blue is the opposite on the color wheel to orange. The contrast of blue and orange offers some dynamic contrast to the relaxed logo and message.
In the future, I would try to create a logo that is a bit more scalable. I did my best to work with this one and make it look good both big and small, but it was difficult at times. With books, sometimes the logos are super tiny, so I think I might have to rethink the rays/amount of rays if I were to complete this project again. I am proud of my work and could see this logo used for a real company.
For DEAD HEAD Publishing the main idea was to do something more edgy and iconoclastic. I loved the idea of doing a “skater brand” but a publishing company. The idea was to make a more intricate drawing, but through the sketching process I decided to move away from that in favor of something more simple. The words were always meant to be the main statement so finding and editing the font to my exact vision was an arduous process, but I am very pleased with the results. In my mind a publishing company is meant to be professional and high end, so the idea was to go the entire opposite direction and make something that does its best to break the norm.
Overall, I am super proud of what I was able to create and the message behind what DEAD HEAD stands for. I would be more than happy to represent a brand with this kind of message and voice. I think it encompasses a personal view of mine of not being tethered to the opinion of others in a way that changes you. So the nonchalant and matter-of-fact nature is one of my favorites to represent. I went with pretty obvious choices for the color and I think that it was the correct choice for the brand.
If I was to do the project over, I might spend a little more time on choosing colors that I like and represent me better than red, white, and black. I think that it works here for what I created, I just don’t associate with the scheme in the same way that I do the message and voice. Typography was a challenge because I had a look that I was invested in creating and it took a lot of time to search and tweak the font to make something that I felt proud of. There is not a ton that I would change and I would happily include this in my own portfolio or as a personal logo.
For my logo project, I wanted to create something that evokes childlike wonder and reminds me of the children’s books I grew up with. The art in those books always inspired me and made me happy, so I decided to channel that same spirit. The idea of Funny Bunny Publishing struck me as I recalled childhood names, one of which was “funny bunny”. The name not only resonated with me, but it rhymes which adds a fun dimension to it.
After sketching, I decided to connect the two words by sharing a letter. The letter “U” stood out because it could be shaped into an abstract bunny, while also highlighting the importance of the reader (“you”) to our company. I wanted to keep the color of the bunny a simple off-white, like many real bunnies, so it would make it easy to recognize.
I had the most trouble with deciding if the bunny should have a face as I worried it might complicate the design. In the end, I decided to include a face for aesthetic purposes and to make it clear that it is a bunny. The pink and blue tones in the logo are slightly faded to give them a softer, more childlike feel.
The font of “Funny Bunny” is Gambano Sans, which has a slightly off-kilter tilt which I found to be playful and fitting for the whimsical tone of the logo. One area I struggled with was balancing the text and image, specifically with alignment and symmetry. In the future, I’d give myself more time to sketch through ideas and work on achieving visual balance.
