Sketches & More Research

From the examples given in Alexia's blog, it seems like Marcia really likes pop art or retro fonts. I attempted to do some sketches but quickly realised I need to use thicker brush pens. I also feel like they really like the handlettering style.

Whipped out my brush pens and started drawing. I was thinking of the idea of a chunky font with the sticker being peeled back halfway to reveal a more elegant font, to represent 'show your truth'. That could be one of the concepts.

I was experimenting around with the star shape, whether the logo could fit within it.

Testing different layouts as well. Also trying out letters with different sizes.

I don't really like the sketches at all because it doesn't show any representation of how it could look like. Maybe I'm just not very good at sketching, hahaha.

Although it was mentioned that the client decided to cut out the vintage look, I have a feeling that they still do very much like the retro style. What's the difference? According to this article...

Retro items don’t have to be old, they can be brand new, but would have to be made in the style of the time or item they are trying to replicate. So, perhaps the best way to think about the difference between retro and vintage is that vintage refers to the acutal construction, whilst retro refers to the appearance.

You can describe a vintage item as retro but never a retro item as vintage.

The consensus is that vintage conjurs up images of antiques, dresses, lace, pearls and florals whilst retro implies geometric shapes, mod and iconic design led items.

Was also thinking of another concept regarding speed because my initial impression was that roller derby was a fast-moving kind of sport. But after chatting with Marcia, only the jammer needs to be quite fast whereas the rest of the team, the blockers, don't have much to do with speed - they tend to huddle around together more, blocking the other team. I might play around with the concept of squished characters to represent that, then.

During the chat, I also clarified a few things about the brief. Some of the references given were quite 'busy' in terms of typographic style, whereas the tonality had asked for 'not too busy' and 'clean and simple'. What she meant by that was that it had to be solid, thick and chunky enough to be easily weeded when it came to the vinyl sticker. I had to research what that was:

Weeding: the process of removing the excess vinyl from lettering or a design that has been cut on the cutter/plotter.

This video shows a really interesting process weeding vinyl stickers, amongst other things.

Marcia expressed that script fonts are a no-no, because that makes it hard to weed, especially if they're small. Knowing that I have to make the logotype easy to weed in the future, here are the criteria/guidelines I came up for myself.

• NO thin lines
• if i'm thinking script text, make sure it's not too thin, maybe offset path to make it thicker
• solid colours - not too many patterns like pop art - maybe 2 tones max
• chunky thick fonts are a yes
• thick accents - yes
• organic, blobby letters - none of that uniform nonsense
• extrude extrude extrude once I'm done

Concept 1: Sticker being peeled back to reveal different font (truth)

Concept 2: Letters being squished together (need to be careful about the lines in between, could be thin, need to take care of readability, different size and scale of the letters)

Concept 3: Simple hand-drawn font, thinking of playing around with negative star space inside. Not too sure yet.

I don't really think I can sketch out the idea that I want on paper. I might move to digital and find a font to expand on, or do some sketches on Procreate.

Did some more research and added to my Pinterest Board.

I'm liking the look of these. 

It's slightly different from Marcia's preferences though (rounder with thicker tail-accents). But I'm thinking I could do one in the style she likes, and for the others, these styles. I really want to push the concepts and make sure they all look quite different and have a variety to choose from.

Good example of subordinate text.

I think if I want to download a font and somehow edit it into a logo, my biggest barrier is whether I can find one that's free for commercial use - knowing that the logo I create may be used in the future for the decal business.

Time spent: 2 hours.