Design one
Design two
Design three
Version 2 – Critiques
Some of the most reoccuring feedback received after presenting the first three designs above was to try and incorporate some suggested content and to display the logo without the background color it initially had. Please see those adjustments incorporated in the updated design below.
Tailoring ISRC designs to two audiences – v1
UMBC campus audience
For the internal UMBC campus audience, I wanted to incorporate a design that was harmonious and tranquil. I wanted a harmonizing color that somewhat symbolized bringing people that are already perhaps close in proximity and working towards some common goals, together. The blue-ish background color also has a relatively good contrast with the black text color ensuring readability from reasonable distances. I also wanted to come up with a design that can easily be scaled up or down to be represented in different media as needed to convey the desired message to the UMBC campus audience.
ISRC letters
Center name
Mission statement
External audience
For the external audience, I wanted to ensure that the design I created was a big attention grabber that would not be missed or overlooked by anyone coming across it in some way. The choice of the color red here ensures that it stands out from the background (or whatever other elements might be around the designed piece) and that the audience notices it right away, even a a glance. The chose red background color also has a relatively good contrast with the black text color ensuring readability from reasonable distances. As with the design above as well, I also wanted to come up with a design that can easily be scaled up or down to be represented in different media as needed to convey the desired message to the audience that is external to the UMBC campus.
ISRC letters
Center name
Mission statement
Tailoring ISRC designs to two audiences – v2
This design has also undergone several iterations and based on the feedback from other designers, some changes have been illustrated in this version. I have also opted to adopt a different color scheme that I think is a little more appropriate in this context. Please follow the links below to view the new designs:
UMBC campus audience
ISRC letters (top left of the page)
Center name (middle of the page)
Mission statement (top of the page)
External audience
ISRC letters (top right of the page)
Center name (bottom of the page)
Mission statement (bottom of the page)
For this assignment, adding color (especially adding multiple colors) turned out to be more challenging than I had initially anticipated. It seemed to get significantly more challenging the more colors I tried to incorporate into my concept illustrations. I was basically looking for good color interactions that also had some reasonable contrast. My goal was to ensure that the resulting design was not only visually appealing, but also with enough contrast that the text is still easily legible. This was relatively easy to do with just one or two colors within the design. Once I ventured past that, it seemed as if I had plenty of colors to apply but then most combinations did not look right when I incorporated them into the design.
One Color added
wordmark1 vs wordmark2
name1 vs name2
mission1 vs mission2
Two Colors added
wordmark1 vs wordmark2
name1 vs name2
mission1 vs mission2
Three Colors added
wordmark1 vs wordmark2
name1 vs name2
mission1 vs mission2
Five Colors added
wordmark1 vs wordmark2
name1 vs name2
mission1 vs mission2
wordmark
the illustrations for ISRC wordmark can be found here: active and grouping
Some of the comments I received on v1 of my designs that inspired the changes I express in v2 can be seen below:
Wordmark 1:
I like the stairway effect on this one. I kind of wish the bottom of the C was aligned with the bottom of the I, though. It kind of hangs oddly. I realize that this would change the formation of the “SRC,” but that may be remedied by changing their size.
I do like the way the SRC are connected and the fact that they don’t touch bottom gives it a feeling of action which is nice. What would happen if instead of hanging off of the bottom of the serif of the “i” the S R C chain started with the S sitting on top of the I’s serif with the R and C dangling down from there? Just something different to try.
I liked the idea of using S, R, C as steps. A minor change that I’d suggest would be to increase the font size of S, R, C so that C is aligned with the base of I.
Wordmark 2:
Clever use of the curve in the “S” and the “R”. The “I” stands out a bit from the rest of the design – doesn’t quite fit in with the “foot” of the S. You may want to try maneuvering it around to see if there’s a way to fit it in better.
The implications of the co-joined S and R are interesting. Would it work better with a different font where the angles of the bowl’s matched better?
Didn’t really understand the concept as much. Would suggest you to change the design probably by changing the angles/font size/type face.
name
the illustrations for the ISRC name can be found here: active and grouping
Some of the comments I received on v1 of my designs that inspired the changes I express in v2 can be seen below:
Name 1:
I like the size differences between the first, capitalized letters of the words and the rest of the words. The connection between the “S” and “R” though is a little odd in this picture. They’re the only two big letters to connect, and the “y” in “Systems” dips oddly into the “R”. It seems intentional, but I’m missing the point. Is the foot of the “y” meant to create a face in the “R”?
It is nice how this design has a lot of movement. There are a few details I might want to work on such as the “enter” in Center seems a little bit low to me. The capital letters S and R connect here, but the capitals I and C are not connected to the chain of capitals. Would having the lower case words line up with the center line of the capitals instead of the baseline help the design?
You can move the word ‘Research’ a bit towards right. This would help in making uniform pattern.
Name 2:
Definitely my favorite design of the set. I thought that was a very clever use of the E’s in each word. You also aligned them very well, and the top and bottom aren’t imbalanced as far as I can tell. Really great job on this one.
This is way too cool. Really good idea. Just to play with it, what would it look like with the central e in a lighter font?
Smart use of letter ‘e’. Liked the design.
mission statement
the illustrations for the ISRC mission statement can be found here:active and grouping
Some of the comments I received on v1 of my designs that inspired the changes I express in v2 can be seen below:
Mission 1:
I like the format of this design. The “stairway” effect of the logo is carried over into the mission statement text not only in its placement (lower than the logo’s center point), but also in its stacking on the right. Good way to follow through. You may consider moving the text down a little to align with the bottom of the “I” in “ISRC,” but then you may need to break up the rest of the letters in the logo. Just something to think about.
I really like how the text in this one mirrors the shape of the logo. The placement of the initial “The” is wonderful. What happens if you put the logo on top of the text, left justifying everything making a larger staircase with a landing on top of the first line of text? Another thing you could try is shrinking the logo so it is closer to the height of the block of text. But really, it works for me as it is.
Similar to Wordmark 1 idea. Liked it.
Mission 2:
You use the great logo design in the second name design, which is great. It definitely needs a “The” to start it off like the first Mission statement design. The rest of the mission statement looks a bit off center from the logo, you may want to move it. Right now it looks like it floats above the center-point.
The logo and the text don’t seem to be working together here. Adding the “the” will help. What happens if you make the text take up less horizontal space and let it flow around the bottom of the logo? What would happen if you used the same font (but not bold) for the mission statement as you used for the logo? or just another font other than the one you’ve currently chosen.
The mission statement is left aligned. I would suggest you to use justify alignment.
wordmark
the illustrations for ISRC wordmark can be found here: active and grouping
for this particular assignment, I take the letters “ISRC” and use them to visually illustrate a concept or two out of some of the ones I had illustrated in previous assignments.
name
the illustrations for the ISRC name can be found here: active and grouping
for the second part of this assignment, I take the words “Interactive Systems Research Center” and also use them to visually illustrate a concept.
mission statement
the illustrations for the ISRC mission statement can be found here: active and grouping
for this third part of the assignment, I take the Interactive Systems Research Center’s mission statement and once more, illustrate the concepts active and grouping. The ISRC’s mission statement given, states that:
“The ISRC acts as a bridge for faculty across the UMBC campus with expertise in designing, building, or studying uses of interactive computing systems. It facilitates the sharing of resources and experience in solving computing problems from a user-centered perspective grounded in user needs and not in simply applying previously designed solutions to new domains.”
this in-class assignment proved to be a lot more challenging than it initially seemed. I chose the letter ‘B’ in a bid to illustrate the concept of a ball. I started by illustrating uppercase letter B by drawing what is supposed to be two basketballs showing where the space/ holes in the letter would be. Next, I again drew an uppercase letter B but with the basketballs now covering where the stroke of the actual letter would cover. I then decided to move on to incorporating two different sets of balls (basketballs and a football) to still illustrate an uppercase letter B. Removing one of the basketballs from the illustration described in the previous sentence gave me what seemed like a lowercase b, something I noticed while trying to re-draw the previous illustration in a bid to make it neater. The rest of the designs were centered around re-drawing some of the previous design ideas in order to investigate whether the illustrations might better represent the concept/ letter with some tweaking. It will be interesting to see what others came up with here.
some changes were incorporated going into v2 based on feedback and critiques from peers both within and outside of my graphic design class. The incorporated changes can be seen illustrated in the designs by following the respective links below:
static/ active
static, as covered in my earlier post, elicits thoughts of a lack of movement or imagining objects or entities placed or sitting in some order and staying that way. The illustrated letters all seem still around the bottom left corner of the rectangle within which they are placed.
the active illustration of the letters seems to elicits thoughts of movement, quite the opposite of static. The letters can be thought of as seemingly rolling around in an imaginary circle and the letter “K” also seeming as if it might tumble and fall in between the other two letters. This seemingly looks as if they are rolling around “in a pattern” as suggested by some of the feedback solicited from others.
random/ grouping
in illustrating random, I wanted to convey a seeming lack of predefined order or pattern. I also further illustrated this concept by highlighting some of my earlier design ideas around using different letter sizes, strokes and spatial positions as suggested in the feedback.
grouping seemed like one of the relatively easier concepts to illustrate and incorporate peer feedback into. I placed the letters slightly closer than I had earlier designed, to the extent of somewhat overlapping their sides based on feedback from others.
authority – parking signs like the one represented above always seem to carry some sort of pre-set rule or authority that everyone intending to park their vehicle close to the sign must adhere to.
dull – the typefaces in this illustration do not stand out in any way to me. There is some use of bolding and different sizing options but at first glance, nothing strikes my eye. It almost seems to me like my reaction would be the same even if the particular typefaces represented here are of the same size.
hip – the typeface used here, the color, the edge around it, etc make it stand out. It seems like it is making an appeal to popularity or standing out.
feminine – this particular typeface has somewhat rounded corners and colors that appear softer or feminine.
fresh – this typeface says “fresh” to me since I view and associate it within the context of the detergent that leaves my once dirty clothes smelling fresh.
overused – I associate this particular typeface with seemingly being overused since I see the sign several times a day, everyday.
For this particular exercise, I noticed that context plays a significant role in terms of how I tend to perceive the world around me. Most of the image choices above came to my mind based on my prior experiences, encounters and understandings around those particular products and signage. Some of the typefaces used in the different signage might not even be significantly different structurally (for example, either having serifs or san serifs) but the context around what meaning I have sub-consciously assigned to the product, for example, automatically has me assign a particular concept to the typeface it displays. For example, the typeface displayed in my restroom/ overused example above might seem fittingly authoritative to me if it were displayed on the parking/ towing sign also among the examples. However, since I come across the restroom sign multiple times as I go through my day, everyday, the first concept that came to my mind after I saw that particular sign was that the typeface is overused.
graphic design reflections 