On Graphic Design

Well folks, this is how its done.
Process and all.
The latest digital photography project is to...
choose 3 themes and make something combining at least six different images.....
for each theme....
sooo one theme is bicycles (surprise surprise)
another iis ....night/UFOs...



The bike theme came from...well from accident, really...
I was farting around with the images, wondering what to do what to do...
how can I mesh thesee together...
Soon enough I accidently inversed an image. Then I said...hmmm
I could add a color to that...and i did.
then I didn't like that color...so I tried more....
then I couldn't decide which color I liked....
so I thought...well fine I'll add them all together...
But then I thought...well gee, I need 6 images, so I'll do different versions in the different colors
aaaaand add some typography...




Before that I was at home and....had
some neat pictures that I had taken on a rainy night....
The cool effects that happen when you take pictures at night of lights...
and they make those lines, y'know?
So yeah, I had those pictures and decided that they would all
mix together well to make some...thing.
One picture looked like an alien...

So after stepping back and asking maria what she
thought it might...look like-ish...weee both decided
ALIENS! and and...NIGHT!
so we skimmed iTunes and found the Sufjan Stevens song
"Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois"
thus the piece was named aaaand finished off.




Neat.


On the logo front, things aren't as smooth...
it really gives you an appreciation for "good"
logo design...or it makes you super critical of logos in generally.
As I bitterly look around, even at "Blogger"'s logo...
if someone saw that in a store, they'd...not have a clue what it was
an 8? is it an 8? No, actually its a B...so they make...chairs? wtf is that?
its nothing. its a B of some shitty typeface that someone stuck in an orange box
and rounded the corners on.
Or the Verizon logo...I pay enough of a cell phone bill
that you'd think they'd be able to hire smoeone for a decent logo
but that damn check mark/half square thinger....what is that?
If someone were to see it alone....they'd think it was a scratch on a page
it says Nothing about ....a cell phone or even communications company.......

At any rate...


Here is where I am at with the FEMBASH records logo...
y'know....you'd THINK...i was getting cclose
like......even to the ball park parking lot...
but here's what I still have:

these radiating curves probably need to be circle fragments, instead of flattened curves. That would call to mind the album/cd circles better.

the starburst at the bottom is distracting. How can you create the IMPACT of the slammed guitar without using the starburst? The feeling of power and motion is still not clear. Have you tried gradation as a way to communicate downward movement ? I also wonder if the symbol could be slamming into the signature (not literally, they don't want to be touching). But right now we don't get a sense of cause and effect with the guitar:ie. what caused it to smash? maybe instead of showing that it smashed (as with the starburst) you could show that it is in the process of smashing (as in just about to hit the signature). Emphasize the momentum of downward thrust, which is easy to do with direction, gradation, contrast of static/dynamic, etc.

I am losing the guitar a bit; does it need some reference to a center line, to refer to the strings? You didn't show me the sketches that got you to this point, but did you try a series of tests where you try to make it more like a women, then more like a guitar? I think when a guitar gets arms it seems to need more clarity that it is in fact a guitar. Especially since the bottom end has other stuff going on.






back to the drawing board, friends.