Logo Design

Artist Statement

For this project, we worked on designing and creating our own logos. For the first part of this assignment, we were asked to blindly choose a word to make a few basic logos of in our sketchbooks. I selected the word "carrot." I began by producing a few thumbnail drawings and playing with the contrasts, fonts, and shapes until I found the one that I liked. For my first logo, I wrote out the letters in bubble letters, drawing the "A" as an actual carrot. I created small indents and divots in each letter to make them match the carrot design. To create a high-contrast logo, I made the letters black, except for the carrot which I made orange, with green leaves. To include a bit more detail and add to the theme, I drew scattered blades of grass to make it look like the logo was almost sitting on the ground. For my summative logo design, the second portion of this project, we were instructed to create a logo based on any aspect of Freeport High School that is important to us. I have always enjoyed doing volunteer work, and feel it is a good opportunity to help others and your community in a selfless way, meet new people, develop new skills, and gain new experiences. I decided to do interact club which I was especially interested in and spent a lot of my free time helping out with freshman year. For this logo, I wanted it to be simple and clean, not too busy, but I also wanted it to send a message. I created a drawing of Earth with a heart at its center and helping hands extending up. At the top, I put the title in a basic font.

In this project, we were required to use a minimal amount of materials. For my word logo, I used a fine-tip black sharpie for the bubble letters and orange and green sharpies for the carrot. In order to process the photo in photoshop so we could edit it easily, it was suggested that we use a black sharpie to make everything bold. I sketched out my drawing first in my moleskin notebook using a 2b pencil and created the outline of the circle using a stencil. It was also suggested in this piece that we thicken up lines so they come out cleaner on the program.

I went through a few different processes while creating my artwork. I had very little experience using photoshop or working with design, so understanding how to maneuver and use the website was a bit of a challenge for me. Learning the basics of the software, learning how to edit, smooth out lines, manipulate shapes with a computer is very different from the usual paints, pencils and other materials I am used to using. Because our logos were relatively simple in their composition, it was more difficult to use the elements of art and principles of design. I was however, able to experiment with incorporating negative space into my FHS logo, a technique I do not normally add to my work, as well as using only two colors to create emphasis and help to separate the different shapes and forms so they wouldn’t blend together on photoshop. Overall, despite having challenges using the editing apps, I do like how my logos came out.