Updated Personal Identity

As a result of my internship at Quirky and my time back east, my views on design and life in general changed dramatically. My design sensibilities and my view of design's impact in people's lives took a more personal and mature turn. As a result I felt it was time to update my website and, as I will show in this blog post, my personal design identity.

My original logo and website were done about 1 year ago and reflected an incomplete understanding of the design process and a than less effective ability to create meaningful visual communication. My original logo was more of an illustration than a identity and the color was chosen to match the glasses I wore at the time.

To begin the process of creating a new identity, I worked through a self identifying questionaire featured on logodesignlove.com. This questionaire allowed me to reason and meditate on my personal values, goals, and vision of what makes me unique as a designer/creative.

I wrote the answers to the questions in a journal/notebook that I carried around with me. I often prefer time alone (I tend to be more of an introvert) and during these quiet moments I would think about the questions and I would record my reactions and the product of my thinking process.

After answering the questionaire I created a mood board to inspire me and to distill my influences into a easy to digest and compelling visual. On the board I included pictures of designers I admired, logos I liked, and activities I enjoy professionally and personally.

After the initial thought process and preparatory work, I began sketching rough concepts/solutions to the problem. These ideas reflect my love of drawing in the design process, the sculptural/form giving aspect of Industrial Design, and the joy I believe good design brings to people's lives.

Once I exhausted my creative ideas on pencil and paper I chose select solutions to develop digitally. The first solution I developed was based on the visual metaphor of a contour gauge. A contour gauge is used to measure sections of clay and foam models, most typically in automotive design. This visual metaphor was used to communicate my love of the sculptural aspect of design.

The next solution I developed digitally was based around a french curve. French curves are used to draw clean, tight and accurate curves. This solution reflects my love of drawing in the design process and draws a strong connection/association to the general preference designers/people have for organic forms.

The third solution I developed was a design identity based on my philosophy that good design brings joy to people and makes them smile. It also communicates the importance of drawing in my design/creative process. The flow of ideas communicated here is that good design makes people happy and good design starts in sketch form, therefore, I draw ideas that make people smile. Note the subtle play and exploration of the well worn "square box" identity. I explored a square in perspective to further enhance the visual association with drawing in design.

The fourth solution I explored was a simple identity that uses a vector of my actual signature as the main visual element. Inspired by the logos of Marc Newson, Karim Rashid and Paul Smith, this solution communicates a personal touch and individuality to my work and my process. It also is a nod to the often highly stylized way designers and artists sign a drawing or painting. My print signature is inspired by my favorite comic book artist's signature, Todd Mcfarlane. I have used this signature to sign my drawings since I was 9 years old. The challenge here was refining my signature into a digital vector while still retaining the calligraphic quality inherent to the original sketch.

Ultimately, after careful consideration and I discussed my ideas with colleagues and mentors, I decided that the signature solution was the most appropriate. Given that it is easy to reproduce in various media, it is legible at various sizes, it is extremely simple and  it reflects my highly personal and sketch driven design process, it is a clear winner for the best solution to my visual communication problem. To refine my hand written signature into a clean digital vector I paid close attention to kerning the individual characters and I made the stroke of the p and n straight lines. These subtle refinements give the logo visual structure.

With the logo solution chosen, I focused my attention on choosing a font for communicating my ideas. The 3 typefaces I considered were Dyeline, Avenir, and Helvetica neue. Dyeline is a typeface designed by Jonathan Hill that is inspired by the type on traditional architectural blueprints. Avenir was designed by Adam Frutiger and is based on Futura. Avenir is an excellent sans serif font that takes the pure geometric approach of Futura and applies a humanist, legibility focused philosophy to enhance the wonderful type that is Futura. In Avenir the vertical strokes are thicker than the horizontal strokes, the o is not a perfect circle and the ascenders are slightly shortened. All of these subtle nuances are aimed at improving legibility and making it a pleasure for people to read. Avenir is a type designed to bring joy to people's reading. Helvetica neue was considered because it is held in high regard in the design community. Ultimately I chose Avenir because of the several well considered reasons I discovered while researching it's form and history.

After choosing Avenir I developed the graphic elements and the typesetting I use for my presentation boards. The leading is calculated by multiplying the character size (13 pts) by the golden ratio (1.618) which brings the leading size to 21 pts. The line width of text paragraphs is also calculated using the golden ratio to enhance the visual rhythm and pleasantness of the page. To create a strong visual hierarchy in the different typesettings (heading, call out, body text, and captions) I chose the fibonacci sequence of 8, 13, 21, and 34 for the type size in points. The graphic elements are designed to reinforce a sense of reasoned logic in my design process. They are simple, to the point, and focused on clarity. The "text box" graphic element is a nod to design activities as communication tools. Whether I am sketching, building a mockup, or rendering a solidworks model in keyshot, all processes/skills are aimed at communicating an idea. Even in my illustration work the final solution is a visual communication of an idea.

With the typesetting determined and the graphic elements designed, I focused my attention on choosing a color for my personal identity. As a result of my questionaire process I discovered that I value design that refreshes people and exudes visual refinement. It also reinforced why green is my favorite color when I discovered that my name Parker means "keeper of the forest" in old english. I explored several variations of green to communicate various aspects of my design philosophy. Acid yellows/greens were considered to communicate a forward thinking technical approach to design. I also explored Mint/Spring greens to reference forests, rebirth, refreshment and to communicate refinement and friendliness. I ultimately chose Pantone 346 M as my official color for it's combined sense of refinement, refreshment and communication of an inviting nature to my work and personality.

Something that I learned while at Quirky is how template pages speed up the design communication process and gives our work a sense of visual harmony/consistency. For my portfolio I developed a set of template pages based on a grid system I developed and all the other initial type/graphic work I showed earlier. These template pages allow me to focus on the product/graphic solutions I am showing and not on page layouts/typefaces/colors. As a result I am able to work more quickly and my portfolio has a more consistent visual voice.

This redesign of my personal identity was critical for me to move forward and to mature as a designer. I'm amazed at how much I learned over the course of a 3 month period and I think that it's reflected quite well in this redesign. After creating this presentation and reviewing it I also noticed that I'm beginning to really get a sense of effective visual spacing/white space. In the past if I sensed a lack of visual harmony I would either fill the page with more elements or make the existing ones larger. Now I can see that visual harmony is a product of a deep understanding of how space interacts with positive visual elements. There are a few pages in this presentation that I think could use more effective spacing, but the beauty of the grid system is that I can focus on that rather than reinventing the wheel each and every time. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed this post and if you have any questions or comments on the process or solution, please feel free to comment below. I welcome direct engagement through constructive criticism and conservation.

The next post will get back to sketching. Until next time.