Palladino | Week Nine

Design Strategy:

My logo design was challenging to construct at first. I wanted to convey my ideal profession for the future, a travel and food writer, however I quickly realized this would be too complicated. I then thought of a personal phrase I use often to describe what being a journalist means for me, “bringing the world to those who do not have the means to see it for themselves.” I, therefore, wanted to focus my logo on a symbol of the world, while keeping things as simple as possible. I chose a black and white globe for my visual and inscribed it in the middle of the “o” in my surname. My main focus stylistically was keeping things clean and simple, for I realized in the beginning conceptualizing processes that increasing complexity can often breed decreased comprehensibility.

Choice of Typeface:

I chose the humanist sans serif typeface Avenir LT Std for my logo because I liked its simplicity and clarity. I wanted a sans serif to ensure a modern look for my logo, and I also enjoyed Avenir LT Std’s slightly geometric style of sticks and circles to construct the letters. What really gave Avenir LT Std personality for me was the counter of the lowercase letter “a,” which resembles a raindrop tilted to one side. I chose to keep my name in all lowercase letters because I wanted to give it an aligned, symmetrical look. My first and last names have the same number of letters in them, and I wanted to make sure they aligned on two lines clearly and neatly.

Visuals:

I began my logo project by designing the business card for size accuracy. I live-traced an image of a globe and custom designed it with the “ink drawing” option, to give the world the look of being created by ink. I was drawn to the way this custom option gave the countries of the glove a whimsical, abstract personality. I then chose to put the world in the middle of the back of the business card at the corners of touching blue and green rectangles. The phrase, “the corners of the globe” came to my mind and I wanted to convey the idea that journalism covers all corners of the globe to bring the world to each and every person. To add another element to my business card, I created solid black borders on the top and bottom edges of the card and inscribed a quote by the famous journalist Henry Luce, “I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.” The heart of something is, culturally, seen as being in the middle, or the center of, that being, which is another reason I positioned the globe in the middle of the business card.

I chose to make the rectangles light blue and light green because, not only are those two of my favorite colors, but I also see blue and green to be very earth-related colors. Blue and green are in balance with each other, with green representing the earth, vitality and new beginnings, and blue representing the waters of the oceans, tranquility and communication.