In my last post for this project ("Ernest G. Welch Redesign"), I did not really write much about my designs because I quickly threw up the post for a digital critique in class. This is part two of that post, so here's a bit of information on the assignment: at Georgia State University, the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design is part of the College of Arts and Sciences. The art school is attempting to separate from the science departments in order to have our own college (like, for example, the Robinson College of Business). Our logo designs are being brought to a committee representing the Welch School of Art and Design who will choose one logo to go before a different committee that ultimately decides whether or not the school can become it's own college. If approved, the chosen logo will be put on the side of the building (as well as business cards) to become the official logo for the school of art and design.
After our digital critique in class, we had an opportunity to edit our logos to make the designs stronger. In my previous post, my first, fourth, and fifth logos were my strongest designs (each for various reasons). Below are the five revisions for each of those logos.
This was the only logo I designed that was not edited. I feel the logo (due to it's very simple typographic nature) was strong enough to stand on its own without revision. The typeface is conservative, representing the professional nature of school--yet the serifs give it elegance that dresses up the logo for the visual arts side of the school. The italic "f" in the word 'of' embodies the prestige of being an artist with it's orientation and flow. I believe the logo scaled down to the 1" size is still incredibly successful and legible when printed.
I believe this design was originally where I intended my first version of this logo to go--I had not fully worked out how to get it there yet. When creating the original logo, I set up the vertical line, but because the word "Welch" was so large on the original, I believe it distracted from the harmony of the logo as I tried to balance and stack the "school of art and design" copy. Because both sides of the line were so bold and large, the vertical line in the original design became lost, and thus, the square around the SoA&D copy came to be. I think it was a very smart choice to knock out that square, put the vertical line back in, and petite the typefaces to give justice and relevance back to the vertical line. The serif and sans-serf contrasting typefaces bring back the prestige and conservatism of education I want to convey with the serif typeface, but gives the school a modern spin with the sans-serif fonts. I believe the modern spin shows that the school keeps up with the trending art movements and is a legitimate competitor to private art schools. I really enjoy all of the letters being lowercase because there is a pleasantness and harmony of having all letters aligned at the x-height. The eye of a viewer can easily flow across the x-height line without having to go up and down as the flow breaks for capital letters.
This logo is the contrast design of my first logo; it functions as an alternative to a serif font design by using a sans-serif typeface. Much like the above first logo, the 1" scales down well. The benefit to logos like this (as well as the first one), are that they are straight to the point. A viewer knows where they are and what they are looking at. The sans-serif typeface emphasises more of the modern feel of art school rather than the prestige and elegance of traditional art schooling.
This is also one of my favorite designs. The boldness of the typeface makes the logo stand out; art school is bold, and it is about engaging the eye. I really like the thin character designs of the Ostrich typeface, because it makes the modernness of a sans-serif font even more modern. The overall shape of the logo starts to create a building feel because of the way the stem of the letter "A" angles inward to create the top of the "A" like a roof of a house. Overall, the logo is very square, which lends itself very well to grind spacing on pretty much any ground--be it a website, a business card, a building...etc. It fills space well without being too horizontal or too vertical. The less-bold ampersand gives the viewer a place to rest the eye; had it been bold like the rest of the logo, I believe it would be significantly harder to read and visualize. This logo design is a very modern, very new, very clean design--yet designed in such a way as to not date very quickly (i.e. "that's so 80's").