Study Task - Symbol

Last week we went on a trip to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, we were set a task to produce a logo using only shapes and negative space which had to work with the Yorkshire Sculpture Parks current logo type.

Before we set off to the Sculpture park I began researching online about this history of the park and some informations about some of the sculptures and exhibitions that were on, so it was easier to decide which places I wanted to go to as Yorkshire Sculpture Park is huge.

As we arrived I grabbed some leaflets which were advertising some exhibitions which were currently on and a map to help me find some of the sculptures which I previously researched.

Once we had are map, we were then told to go find and capture images of sculptures that were permanently at the park and some that we found visually attractive.  Here are a few of the images which  I captured: 

Hester reeve 

Jonathan Borofsky

David Nash 

Barbara Hepworth: The family of men 

Niki de Saint 

Henry Moore: Seated women 

Julian Opie 

 Poppies Waves 

Joconjosch: Eddy 

Joan Miro 

Ai Weiwei 

Jaume Plensa

Henry Moore 

Here are some more images of leafs and trees which I found online as I thought that I might be able to incorporate some things that were not sculptures into my shape logo design: 

From gathering research and images I then began to start sketching out some logo ideas starting out with the idea of the logo being based around a sculpture: 

Below are the ours of a boat which I illustrated as the Joconjosch: Eddy sculpture has a boat with ours underneath it but I wanted to keep it simplistic so I took the ideas of ours and did a little illustration which I quite like.

In this idea which I created a logo using Joconjosch: Eddy sculpture as inspiration from the Yorkshire sculpture park, I tried simplifying it down so that it would legible in a logo design and I wanted to simplify it also because I only wanted to create a simple logo anyway. 

In this image below I tried adding  more detail to make it look more like the Joconjosch: Eddy sculpture design. I did this by image tracing a picture of tiles, from creating this, I decided that the tiles didn't work as they look like letters and it was also to detailed and wouldn't be legible shrunk down to a smaller size. Although I did find that I like the use of the colour green because it brightens the logo design up. 

From deciding that I liked the use of the colour green because it links to nature at the sculpture park and it's and earthy colour, I began to introduce more colour to see how much further I could take it before it began to get over powered. From this I decided that having all of the logo green that it was to much and was effecting the legibility of the logo. 

I then began experimenting in different ways that I could use colour adding it different parts of the logo to see what was going to look best and as i've discovered here again the colours is overpowering and difficult to look at. 

I tried again to simplify the colour down even more this time, and not using it on the roof of the sculpture. I outlined the roof in green rather than the whole roof to see if the legibility would work better, although I found that it still didn't work. 

From the above digital expermiemtation, I decided that the logo wasn't going to fit particularly well as it was to detailed, and the fact that it also only showed one sculpture and didn't promote the park as a whole. Also I found that when I asked other piers on my course they thought it was a logo for a rowing company. 

However from the experimentation above and piers feedback, I found that I needed to create a logo that was going to communicate a number of things rather than just one. So I started by scanning in a some leaves which i found at the sculpture park and image tracing them to get some of the detail from the leaf. 

Above is my first experimentation for the leaf design which I found satisfying, when image traced the leaf turned black, which I wasn't to sure of at first as it looked dull, but I then began to take small parts of the leaf out to create negative space and give some vibrance.

From finding that i liked the idea of the lead, I then started to play around with how type would go next to it. So i began using a font that would modernise the logo, the font I used was Bebas Neue, this font is modern as it's a sans serif font for immediately looks younger. I also wanted to keep the earthy colour scheme by using green and grey which I found visually pleasing. 

Because of my previous experimentation, I though it would be worth testing out the colour green on the leafs to see how they work. When I created this idea I personally thought that it would work well in a logos you can still see the detail and then highlights in the leaf. 

I then began developing the idea even more, by adding text. Having knowledge from my previous experimentation that I liked the use of the colours green and grey, I then thought I could add another colour into the mix to make the colour palette even more visually interesting. For this I added the refreshing colour of white, white I find brightens up a design and it makes a design look fresh. Creating this idea I discovered that it was my favourite in my experiments so far. 

To make sure that I thought white would be the best colour I then experimented with black, immediately I found that black made the logo look harsh and was less earthy, so from this I decided that I wouldn't use the colours black in this logo idea.

I then experimented with the colour green, which I found satisfying but was unsure of the colour being over powering. Soon I decided that it was to bright to look at with both the text and the leaves using the colour greens and therefore would not work in a logo. 

From previous experimentation I decided that white was going to be the best colour so i started to play around with the layout of the text, but found this experimentation above of the type felt visually awkward to look at because of how sectioned and spaced out the type was.

I then thought of maybe using boxes of circles to go around the logo, as from the research I found that most logos were in circular shapes of square shapes so I experimented with this idea, but soon found out it didn't work, the reason for this is because I felt because of the detail of the leaves I felt that it didn't need anything else on it as a logo.

Although I was confident with the detail of the leaves, further into thinking of ideas I decided the leaves were to detailed therefore when they would be shrunk down to a smaller size that the  detail wouldn't be so legible. From talking to my piers about this design I also learnt of new ides, one of them was to try simplify it down and incorporate sculpture into the stems of the leaves, to make it clear what type of park it is. 

From my piers opinions and inspirations I began to try experiment with the idea of trying to create a more of a sculpture logo. I started this by creating small visual illustrations using the pen tool on illustrator.  Also on the leafs above and below I tried to create a tree shape in the leafs to almost look like a sculpture. So far I've had mixed feelings about the designs, although I do find my Illustrations visually pleasing. 

Unsure of how much detail I should be putting in my leaf i then imaged traced a photo of another leaf which i found, which had less detail which works nicely, although i couldn't see the potential to manipulate a tree figure into it. 

I then began trying to make the leafs stem stand out more to look like a sculpture but found that it was still going to be too detailed when I shrunk it down and would not be legible. 

This below is when I was trying to make the leaf I imaged traced and manipulated into a tree try stand out more, but I found that it looked to chunky and it was still to complex for a logo design, as legibility would be an issue. 

This image above is from another idea which I came up with which I like but I think that it's too detailed for a logo. Although i think it has a juxtaposition  as it looks like a sculpture but also looks like the detailing in the leaf, the use of the green helps show that also.

This is an image trace of the Henry Moore Sculpture in Yorkshire sculpture park which I created, I needed to find a way to simplify my logo down quite far as I was making it to complicated. By image tracing the image it blocked out any detail which I think works well.

I then started to play round with different colours that could possibly go with it, again through my experimentation I have realised that the use of the green and grey which are earthy colours work really well. My favourite logo out of all of them would be the green and white one below me as it communicates best because it uses earthy colour, simple and would be legible shrunken  to a smaller size.