Overview

Jennifer Campbell is a fine artist/painter who needed a visual identity to unify her marketing efforts for galleries and direct buyers. The project goals were to create an identity that complemented her personal aesthetic and personality. There was also discussion that Jennifer could possibly use the logo as a stamp to apply to the back of her work. This consideration came about, as, oddly enough, while Jennifer can clearly paint, she has trouble signing her work in a way that she is happy with.

Testimonial

“The assumption that artists can easily establish their own brand is inaccurate. The reality is that as a fine artist, my focus is on my work and branding requires a distinctly different skills-set. I wanted a mark, something that was representative of who I am as well as reflecting my style. Working with Steve was a wonderful experience. His professional approach was refreshing. Steve’s deep passion for his work and love for identities provided invaluable perspective throughout the process. He brings an enthusiasm through a process that make you acutely aware that you are defining your brand at the ground level. The end-product exceeded my expectations, it is exactly, well . . . me!”

Jennifer R.A. Campbell, Artist

Discovery

Some of the questions I asked Jennifer during the discovery phase of the creative process were different from several I normally ask. I don’t usually ask or put too much weight on the likes and dislikes of a client’s personal taste. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I am usually designing for their audience, not them. I listen, and it does go into the mix, but with the same weight as my own personal likes and dislikes. It is their audience’s likes and dislikes that I am driven by. For this project, Jennifer’s artistic work is a product of her personality, so reflecting her personal qualities became the focus for the identity. One of the requests I made of her was a list of logos that she felt strongly about, as seen above.

Sketching

One of the many pages of sketches produced for this project. You can see the beginnings of what became an alternate concept presented to Jennifer. (Note I misspelled Jennifer in the sketch.)

Alternate Concept

A number of concepts were originally shown to Jennifer and the logo shown above was one of the designs that made it past the thumbnail and rough stage to be refined and presented.

Logo Development

Rough logo concept refined using Adobe Illustrator.

After some exploration, I decided to redraw the type so it was heavier and to change the lowercase “r” of Jennifer’s middle initials to upper case.

After some further conversations with Jennifer about the idea of using only her initials, I tried simplifying the concept. At this point I also went back to the design of the original “r” of her initials.

I was very happy with the simplicity as a result of the stacked initials but it lacked weight and the “J” seemed out of balance. Placing it on a rectangle solved both of these issues.

Wanting it to be a little more refined, I replaced the solid area with a heavy border.

Kerning

The type used for the identity is Franklin Gothic Medium. The image above shows the importance of kerning, the space between individual letters. The top line is the text typed in with no adjustments and the bottom line is the type kerned and the middle line shows the overlapping shapes.

Scalability and Usage

Black

Color

Reverse

Color on Black

Application on image

Color blocks

Typeface Usage

Color Palette

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