U&LC Influencing Design & Typography

Photographs of the book.

U&LC, Influencing Design and Typography.

Early on today I visited the Libary and picked up the U&LC book I have been waiting around for, 'U&LC, Influencing Design and Typography.'

MKN Design

I stubbled across this when I was checking the availability ok MKN Design,

MKN Design is the brand title I was going to give my self and the title of my design agency, but unfortually, that has already been taken by someone.

As disappointed as I was, I thought I would check it out anyways, and their is some really impressive design on there. Including some branding/identity which is something I have been looking into lately as it is a chosen brief of mine.

Here is some MKN Design Branding work;

Care Logistic, here MKN Design show numerous options that they could have taken, but don't mention what was the final design, but minus that there is some really nice neat designs.

The simplicity of taking a existing symbol and simply deconstructing the design and removing a piece giving the design a different effect.

Compared to the other two, this one does not have the same effect, still kept it simple, neat and tidy, but it doesn't stand out from the crowd.

Water For Life, Unfortually on the website it doesn't explain very well about what the designs have been produced before. These set of Water for Life branding are nice designs, neat, clean symbols.

This is something I found odd about the site, MKN Design, He/She had layout work, JPG and a photograph, first time I have seen layout on a designers website, but minus that it is really nice design, good use of type and a clean clear symbol.

The RT London designs are something I really like, keeping the design plain and simple, showing the image working in context, and illustrations of the business card.

As good as some of the designs are, the images he decides to use on the website of pretty odd.

Once again, showing layout work, JPG's and the design in context, pretty odd.

Once again keeping the designs simple, he/she often have a symbol along with text, that is something I have noticed through alot of the work that has been produced.

The designs work really nice in context, here we where given the design on the spine of a book.

Corporate Identity, As well as branding logo's, MKN Design all so provide Corporate Identity for clients, and the stuff they produce is what I get influenced by, nice, neat, easy designs.

Producing Logo's, Business Cards, Letter Heads & Compliment Slips, they never need to much splashed on them, but these are the style and direction I head in when producing them myself.

Once again keeping the design simple, Less is more in some cases.

As well as symbols, logo designs, corporate identity, MKN Design also work to a much larger size. Example below being a large metal entrance sign.

http://www.mkn-design.com/

Black & White Logo.

When Reece asked me to do his branding an his Corporate Identity, I wasn't given any restrictions, just to keep it simple and black and white.

I feel with the logo, I have done, a simple an easy design, no I have the option of the two below.

& I tested if the colours work in the opposite directions and I feel they do;

A few people have mentioned that this could be mistaken for a ''C'' if people didn't already know his name. So I had a mess about and came up with the idea above.

Reece Leung Photography, Logo Ideas.

I finally got my logo designs from paper on to Illustrator. Some of them look very cheap, but I have put together plenty of ideas I am really happy with.

Below are the designs I came up with, some just taking a few tweaks and edits;

I had the idea of deconstructing the character "R" so it had more impact that your standard ''R''

I edited the ''R'' to how I wanted it, and started working with what goes around it.

I worked with having the ''L'' the same length as the ''R'' but I don't feel it has the impact that the others do with it being shorter, although Uppercase letters are the same size, don't feel this works.

Rotating the ''R'' made the design look a little different, but also a little better, so I thought this is something I could start to work with.

Little things make the design look abit stronger, example here being the full stop, just a simple add gives the design a little bit more.

I came up with the idea of not using a existing typeface, but to make the letters out of shapes. But sticking to the same idea, of the edited ''R'' cause feel that could really work.

This was the first initial design I came up with, and instantly thought it looked abit better than the other designs, but felt there is still something more that could be done to it.

I decided on trying out the idea of rotating the ''R'' and starting experimenting with different ways of working around the symbol.

I levelled the ascender on the ''L'' to line up with the ''R'' and feel it works really well, nice, simple and neat.

Then came the idea of joining them together so it looks like a large symbol. It does work, but something is missing, So I continued to play about with the design.

Experimenting got abit much, cause this just doesn't work at all.

I thought of having the ascender raised up to the top of the uppercase ''R" with the symbol now have a full backwards are with a attached ''L'', something that could work.

This is the strongest design so far I feel, like the layout and how it is all attached. How you can notice the circles. The idea of the circles and the lines making the one symbol.

Starting to mess with raising bits of the letters to see if it has a changing effect. There is improvement, just not the greatest amount to change the whole design.

Tried the idea of filling in the filter, but simply didn't work.

I continued to experiment with little tweaks and changes to the symbol that I found I was happy with to see if I could change them to have a larger effect.

I simply added a full stop, and straight away I felt it had a large impact, when looking at the design I feel it spells out Reece.

Below, are a few ideas I put together but don't feel they had a effect that they could really.

Some of the design here work, but I know I am capable of producing better designs.

The design below, I really like, but there is the possibility of people reading the initials as "PL" rather than "RL."

I had been working alot with San-Serif type faces, so I thought I would experiment on the side of Serif typefaces, see what I can bring together.

Although some of the Serif typefaces worked, I don't feel they had the effect that the San-Serif designs. Just looked a little cheap, could possibly work in different situations, but I don't feel they fit in, with the type of person Reece is.