Project 3: Logo | Wong

Design Strategy

I really wanted to play around with my initials because the letters “M” and “W” are often symmetrical in my typefaces. I actually tried making logos that were actual pictures, but when I tried shrinking the logo, you could barely see what was going on, so I decided that using my initials were a better idea. Also, I was looking through a lot of logos from different public relations firms, and I saw that they were all very simplistic. My favorite ended up being the FD logo (the firm recently redid their logo), because it was bold but also simple and still seemed professional. I wanted my logo to come off as professional, but colorful to show that I could be fun. 

I liked intertwining the letters so that the end result would look a bit like argyle because I am a very preppy person. I chose the colors Pantone 286EC for the front “M and Pantone 642EC for the “W” because many of my friends would call me a huge tomboy, and also because blue is a very business-like color. The M is darker in order to emphasize my first name. I also chose to use my initials because the end result was a very clean logo. I tried filling in the diamonds, or using gestalt principals so that you could envision the “M” or “W,” but in the end I liked the original result of 3 diamonds created by overlapping the two letters. It was clean, and I liked that you could change the colors easily – making it an adaptable logo, and thus implying that I could adapt to whatever type of work my clients would want me to do.

Choice of Typefaces

I used ITC Kabel Std for all the wording (my name, address) for the stationary set because it was the font most similar to the letters in my logo. Although my logo seems like a font, I actually scanned different versions of my handwriting and then traced my handwriting with the pen tool.

Visuals

I basically scanned a sheet of paper that I had written the letter M on in different ways, and then traced each one with the pen tool to see which type of I liked better. Then I made a copy of my trace and turned it 180 degrees so that the M and W would be completely symmetrical, and then overlapped the two letters and grouped the two items. I did this all in InDesign because that is my favorite program to work within the creative suite.