I took advantage of this first symbol project to carry on with summer project I did not get around to work on. The plan was to design a logo for an imaginary coffee shop that I have had in mind for a while but I simply did not know how or where to start. When this project came up, we were asked if we had something that required symbols. I knew I could use this imaginary coffee shop as my topic, the big idea, and so I had a starting point to a six week long process.
After having a topic, I had to figure out 9 words that were related to the topic and with one another. The purpose behind these 9 words was to look at the topic through different perspectives in order to get to a symbol, which does not look like a thing but is representative of something, in this case a coffee shop. In order to get to these 9 words, I first read Brian Westover’s “12 Surefire Brainstorming Techniques” and after it, I decided to use the technique of free-writing along with word association.
The way to get to these words was through writing words that came up from the thought of the original. For example, I started with coffee, being the closest to the topic, and from there I wrote words that came up in my mind at the sound of it, such as beans, aroma, and roast. I tried doing that again with those other words and so on until I had a variety of words to choose from. I also made a Pinterest board where I collected images based off of these words and also helped me come up with other words.
I chose the final 9 words based off what I was supposed to do with them. I was to divide them into three sections consisting of three words each. I had to trace a photograph of three words, stylize an image of other three, and create an abstract representation of the last three. Therefore, I chose words that would make this process easier leaving actual objects for being traced or stylized and choosing adjectives for abstract representations.
For the third week, I traced the photographs, which I found on Flickr through the Creative Commons license, of the words beans, cup, and bread which came from the word sweet. I also made three more icons by drawing the the words book, cottage, and aroma in my own natural style.
I found the tracing to be the easiest step of the process and thought stylize would be easier since it would be in my own drawing style. However, I did have trouble when making my own drawing of the house, especially for a symbol. The problem was that my first drawing for the word cottage was too intricate and for the purpose of this project was not okay. If this overly-intricate drawing was to be a symbol, it would not be able to scale down without losing these small details.
I kept working on new drawings by taking away those extra details to make it look more like a symbol, which must be simple yet in its simpleness still retain that essence of what it is representing. After doing several drawings, I had a couple of options to choose from. I decided to have also have more options for the other words that way I had more to work with and more possible combinations which were going to be a result through hybridizing.
The fourth week I had to create the abstract symbols, which were the easiest for me to do. The goal was to make this symbol not look like anything and for this I had to look at the word from different angles. The word association technique was very helpful in this case because I could expand from the main word yet still be associated with it.
For the fifth week, I already had symbols for the 9 words and it was time for hybridizing. Initially, I went through this process by merging two different symbols, each from a different word, to become one. I would crop part of one to fit into the other and create a balanced symbol. While I was making these symbols, I had to lose the fear of destroying them for the purpose of this new creation but at the same time I kept in mind that each symbol’s essence should be present within the new symbol.
At first, I felt I had done a good job reaching this point in which the new symbol had characteristics of the parent symbols and no one more dominant than the other.but the problem was that I only merged them but not really massage them into creating a new form. In other words, it seemed like one symbols was just really placed with another symbol to create one, but not a mixture of both. This was noted by the presence of generic forms such as circles and lines that could easily be created without any involvement of pathfinder.
The following step was to massage these forms. I had to move on from these basic symbols and evolve them to more nuanced and unique creations. I had to take ownership. Of course, the principles of design, such as balance and harmony, and the weight of the symbol, for the purpose of scaling, were still at play. I always had to keep in mind the ability to scale the image as small as 0.15 inches without losing its character.
By the sixth week, I was down to choosing my 3 favorite symbols and creating 3 iterations of each one. By this time I already had been through a couple of critiques through which I picked up what to work and improve on as well as picked up technical skills to come up with a more developed design.
In all, I feel extremely satisfied with the outcome of my symbols. These symbols are the result of various critiques, massaging, and scaling tests as small as the height of a 12pt line of type. They are simple, not overly-detailed, and feel like a baby, a new creation evolved from the original symbols.