As our second collaborative task for LCA we have all been divided into groups and allocated a company, with the aim of redesigning their logo. We can only use typogrphy and it has to be based on one of Vigelli's 6 Typefaces, simply adjusted accordingly. With this in mind, we have been given 'Crosswater', a UK based shower and fixture company.
Naturally we started by conducting research of the company, highlighting their moderninity with aspects of hints towards Retro sophistication. We started off as brainstorming as a group, then brainstorming on our own generating ideas in what direction we individually wanted to go in.
After delving deeper into the companies ethics, we all decided to go away and create one idea to (most of) Vigelli's 6 typefaces. I decided to experiment and transform Serif Garamond, into a san-serif typeface. Naturally, I turned to my computer and tried to get rid of the brackets and flicks. This did not go aswell as planned due to each level of letering (especially the C) being different levels, looking really uneven. By keeping the deeper bowls and curvature of the letter forms, I intended to incorporate a classy style with the typographic trends of today. Lets just say, the idea was better in my head than its execution. This lead me on to keeping the original Serif style, but abbreviating Cross Water to CW and alining the flicks within the letter forms. This gives a much more geometric style, and something to extend further.
// Resolving a Style & Colour Ways
After experimenting with these individual letter forms with little success I decided to go in a different direction and create letter compositions with both CW and 'CrossWater'. We all thought it was best to keep to an overall theme of Black/ Blue/ White colour scheme, reflecting the current website and referencing the product. I tried to see if changing the name would give a better effect, thus came up with the name 'Aqua Sleek'. I thought this was the most appropriate as the 'sleek' references their high quality and new age style, whilst the 'aqua' simply highlighted that they work with water products. I also tried to experiment with the tones of blue used, instead of jumping into a deep masculine blue- as the target audience who buys luxury showers may appeal to a softer colour. After trying a range of light - mid blues, it was evident that a deep-mid blue looked the most effective, both on screen and printed out. In the above image all of my designs are highlighted by the red asterix*, however they have been composed with others to show our thought pattern as a group.
Ben created the S at the top right of the image which we all really liked as a whole. The cut off style and bold lettering in Helvetica looked almost pipe-like which we thought was a relevant avenue to explore. Going on from the cut off angle, Nicky came up with the idea of tilting and cutting into the letterforms in an upwards angle to connote underlying messages of stock markets/ positivity and inclining success. At this point as a group we thought Futura was the best route to go down as it was most effective for this cut off style, especially due to its art deco routes. We discovered that the Futura type face was created in the 1930's to correspond with the changing culture of the time and as some of the photography on the website incorporated retro/ art deco elements (such as a pin up girl for advertising and tiling in the show images) we thought this best reflected the brand.
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| Original web layout
//Finalised Ideas
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| Reinvented Web Layout |
After looking back at our original research and piecing together a possible 'finished product' we tried mocking up the website to see how it would look in its intended environment before finalising our ideas. From doing this it was evident that Futura was simply too spiky (the W especially) around the bottoms and didn't give off the right message of the company as it looked way too harsh. We then reverted back to the pipe like origins inspired by that letter S after several group brainstorms of making Futura softer and did the same mock up again in Helvetica with kerned lettering. As the history of Futura was really appealing and relevant to the company we still wanted to include it somehow. With this in mind, we cut off the edge of the W to resemble the pointy style we felt was quintessential of Futura within this brief. To present the final product we did modify the colour ways slightly and presented it on the blue background, which ironically we actually preferred! This has been a really good learning exercise, not only in group work but thinking subliminally of what is most relevant for the companies persona and underlying meanings.
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