Logo Design: New York Connection

I really like this logo.

I like how the letters are hand done, but still look like they were perfectly designed shapes, consciously placed within the outline of the apple. It isn’t just haphazard scrawling. It is sophisticated hand penned design.

Look at the way the bottom right stem of the K dovetails and creates a uniform width line of negative space against the extended serif of the N below it. Beautiful.

Look at variation of line widths, the kind of variation you get with a calligraphic pen. You can’t even get this with a sharpie, as much as I love sharpies. These lines are interesting to look at, where ever you choose to look.

I love the shape and flow of the wavy double underline at the bottom. And love the artist’s decision to break the lines into a longer set of two and a shorter set of two. It’s those kind of unexpected decisions that make this really stand out for me.

How cool is the loop at the beginning of that first T?!

And I like the rather clunkily shaped, but well placed, chunk of black space beneath it. Delicious!

The back to back N’s in the bottom word have subtle variation to prove their craftsmanship and show that they are not the generic mass offering of a type foundry. No, these lines come from a specific place.

I love this logo as an emblem for this particular exhibition. It’s an exhibition that features wildly colorful works of street artists, all around the theme of New York. But this logo face, doesn’t try to be the literal cover for this book. It exists in an Apple-like minimalism, black and white, confident and bold. Serving as an emblem or shield for the show, while not trying to compete for attention with the works at all.

Tokyo Design

It’s impossible to narrow the essence of Tokyo design down to a single style. It’s a remix culture, that borrows icons and motifs from abroad and spins them in their own way. Usually these remixes are very clean and iconic, pattern oriented, making them ideal for the jump from pure design into wearable fashion.

But the trend of design I’m liking, is a more casual and less fashion ready style. One that mainly exists in the multitude of art mags you can find at the local shops and galleries. It feels to me like ‘photoshop enabled photocopy art.’ And I enjoy seeing that style in a printed and bound volume.

It’s not an attempt at photorealism. It’s a kind of clunky surrealism, that goes for more of a mood than trying to augment reality. It feels very random, but in a visually striking way. Almost like the freedom of doodling in a sketchbook, but with fully realized images.

In Tokyo, there is also a solid mastery of a kind of perfect-imperfect typesetting. Letterforms that look so awkwardly placed, that you soon realize they could not be more awkwardly placed, therefore giving it a certain puzzle solving, eye-pleasing reward. Very ordinary fonts used in a way that makes them alarmingly ordinary. A rebranding of the taken for granted.

If Van Gogh was inspired by classic Japanese paintings, maybe the modern designer can be similarly influenced by the graphic aesthetic of Tokyo today..

Anyway, I’m aiming to post more bits of Tokyo design inspiration on here.