identity, logo

A new company, doing consulting in aviation, in need of a company profile, web, logo. I enjoyed this project, mainly because the client wanted an abstract logo. People often say that, but they do not really mean it, when you get down to it. The logo, I know, breaks pretty much all logo rules and sensibilities, but I am really pleased with it. It gives me assosiations to aviation instruments, radar, sunrises from below, aeroeverything, space, and in some versions, to propellers. For obvious reasons, the logo being so complex, it comes in a few different versions depending on use. What makes me happy is that I can slice the logo, I can use only a part of it, and the recognition should not be a problem.

web

The client wanted different images on different pages of the website. I am not really a fan of background images for two reasons: it can take forever to load, and it is a hassle to scale. Responsive design is a relatively new way of dealing with a plethora of screen sizes, so the “standards” to deal with it is not exactly set in stone.

IA

IA, or information architecture, is not as trivial as many seems to think. This is where clients often gets confused and I am considering building a little “beginners guide to IA” to make it easier for me, cheaper and more understandable for the client. Much time can be basically wasted because of structural uncertainties.

misc

I like testing out the grapics I make on different things. It gives an idea of how it might work in the real world, and problems arrive that needs to be solved for the logo to do the job. A logo like this is not easy to place on letterpapers, envelopes, businesscards, cars etc. Basically, it cannot be in just one version for all these uses. FedEx can, Quality Flight Solutions needs sophisticated solutions.

The devil is in the details. Favicons! Everyone should have one.

I was given the job through Immelie, a contractor and employee of the Telecom Museum.

Apparently, the kids like it! :-D

I haven’t touched a pencil or a brush in years. Not properly, not committedly. But in this situation of pressure, essays to write, video to edit, processes to define, compose, structure, books to read, technology to decipher, articles to consume – here, now, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a deep melancholy need to find out – do I still have it? Is it really part of me?
Once it is established that so-and-so is good at this-or-that, it is hard to rock those perceptions, and I was always defined as “good at drawing”. A blessing and a curse.
But drawing is about practice, a collaboration between hand, heart and head, it is about proportions, about light. It is about shapes and negative space and intuition, but most of all it is about shadows.

(“Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act falls the Shadow”).

Most books that teach drawing start out with sketches of The Whole. I have always started in one corner and worked my way around haphazardly. A dangerous strategy, as it might not add up, when you connect lines at the other end of the page. The secret lies in those tiny shadows and getting them right. Then it will add up, and I will have finished a drawing of a whole I haven’t really looked at until it is finished. It is a little magic, it is deep meditation, but I doubt it is art.
Tricky things to draw: glass, water, hands. I always come back to hands. They never look right, but sometimes they are. Look at your own, see the fingers foreshortened, twist a little, and you’ll realise that good old Michelangelo was not far off.

But do I still have it?
I fumbled a little. It got better. I did a few hands, and the last ones had that familiar quality. Recognisably my hand, nicks and scars included; familiar handiwork. Drawing a beat-up transparent plastic bottle at an angle was a tad early, it seems a little practice will do it.
I am comforted; I am relieved. I am also hooked again.
It is not great art, but it is solid craft, decent draftsmanship.

Good enough for me.
_____________________

as a ps. A current work in progress. I’ll leave portraits for a bit, methinks.

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-Douglas Hofstadter-

What on earth is it? No one can give a vaguely sensible answer to what goes on in my brain. It is non-stop, it goes on every waking hour, and, I suspect, when I sleep as well. It is a constant rattling, a background noise in my head: constantly having new ideas, judging colours, angles, texture, making connections, soaking up words or phrases in any situation. Connecting bizarre things together; finding some hue, taste or sound that bring unrelated things together in my head, spanning languages, centuries, words, colours, poetry, sounds, materials, buildings, life forms; from teaspoons to magma. It is exhausting, in a way, but it’s been going on my whole life, so I have no idea what it would be like without it.
It makes me able to make metaphors no one understands. How admirable.

Bits of paper, books with notes in the margins, or the last blank pages missing to some long forgotten desperate need for scribbling something. Piles of notebooks half filled out with unidentifiable ideas, but sometimes, sometimes a notebook contains a tiny little doodle that have it. Some magic little quality.

And there it is – a perfect little doodle or a surprising combination of letters or words. Something that it would be impossible to improve on. Adding something would ruin it. A doodle; born perfect. An interaction of letterforms in perfect balance and meaning. Trying to do it again would not work.
Magic.

I can track a meeting through the doodles I make. I remember what was said from little squiggles. People who have not seen my meeting-doodles show me endless post-its with circles repeated endlessly and say, I do it too! No you don’t. Because my doodles – unconsciously – covers and span universes. They are bizarre, funny, sometimes scary, sometimes awful. often abstract. I am sure a psychologist would have a field day, but at least it keeps me awake through boring meetings. The doodles are an illustration of the noise that goes on in my head – forced to sit still and listen to some boring twat go on about strategies for the future and how to fix something that is not broken – the endless connecting process bursts out on paper.

And I am beginning slowly to realise that not everybody have this racket going on. In fact, very few people have the faintest idea what I am talking about.
So I wonder what goes in their heads.