Blog no.9 28/08/23
It's been a moment since I've sat down and reflected. It's currently Ōhua, a low-energy time when it's recommended to reflect and plan. I think my practice has lost its direction because of my lack of reflection. I've been iterating on logo concepts, reading literature and capturing relevant insights, but I haven't really sat down and sorted through all I'm learning. Regarding the Hautū Waka, I found a vision through Te Kitenga phase activities in weeks 4 and 5 but then started circling, idling, and observing tohu but not making any great advances. Week 6 was a bit of a limbo week, and because of that, I'm going to have to use my mid-sem break contingency that I built into my plan. This was fairly expected, sometimes there are times when no progress is made, and that's okay but I do think if I spent more time reflecting I could, at least, have done some critical refining of my ideas.
My logo process is shown below, and although not integral to this stage, It helped me think about my audience and seed the beginnings of personas through my thought exercises in viewing the logo from different perspectives.
Laying out my process as I have, illuminated my methods and maybe gave me a framework I can implement into the craft workshops I'm designing. First I curated a mood board based of content (trans joy, diversity, inclusion, celebration, quilting, craft) and style (corporate, colourful, clean, organic). I observed these images while doing messy drawings to see what came out. I selected the one that felt best iterated it on paper then transferred to digital (Illustrator) where I made variations within the format then when I felt it was limiting, broke the box and explored moving image (After Effects). Using After Effects especially, brought my attention to how the form was constructed and by seeing it deconstructed I was able to assemble it in a new way as my final logo. I
was able to know I'd reached the final purely by gut feeling. The graphic feels harmonious and dynamic, reading as clean and professional with an element of playfulness. The quilt features may not be obvious at first glance, which I think plays to my advantage as I do want people to come to the workshops with an open mind, especially with the historical connotations of quilting.
The font family I selected was Owners Text I then created outlines and played with the typeface so it had small nods to crafting, I would probably only include these in headings, body text will likely be in Owners Text Regular/ Italic. I was able to utilise some of these visual elements in my presentation for 302. It won't be the first time I need to communicate my ideas, so it was good practice and I'm actually happy that I spent time on the aesthetics of this project at this stage.