Eight years ago, music producer Gaurav Raina – of MIDIval Punditz fame – approached me asking for a logo for his record label. As someone who had never designed a logo before in my life, I was certainly taken aback by this commission. At the same time, however, I also knew just how much I enjoyed messing with shapes and tools on Affinity Photo (a software I use that’s designed to compete with Photoshop) and Designer (its Adobe Illustrator analogue). So I figured, why not give it a shot?
The next step – for this erstwhile amateur graphic designer, that is – was to offer some color options so as to better understand what Gaurav wanted.
One of the very first thumbnails – the one made by simply reducing the kerning between the word “gravity” in the font Courier – was the one my client appreciated the most out of all these, and requested of me to build on it. To do so, I designed the first of what would be many iterations of the image-part of the logo, as my client wanted both a type-based logo as well as an image-based one accompanying it. All of these would have similar color options offered, for the same reasons as stated above – to better gauge what the client would ultimately like.
Furthermore, I added some variety to their juxtaposition, with the image and the type in different orientations with each other. One common factor among these was to adhere to a cassette tape-like motif. Along the way, I’d also made a few completely different, completely unique ideas that had build up along the way, though I ended up rejecting all of them myself given my client had already chosen what he was pleased with. These came from my earnestness to adhere to the word ‘gravity’ – something Gaurav did not really want or ask for – but I figured it was still worth a try, as I made a space-themed and apple-themed logo, both of which have a degree of direct compatibility with the word “gravity”.
Ultimately, however, Gaurav communicated to me that even though I do have my merits in terms of wanting to design a more traditional logo, he’d chosen me for my hand-drawn illustration style more than anything else. Consequently, I came up with the final iteration of the logo-image: a large, monolithic “G” that appears to be carved out of stone, with a certain weight to it. My client – to my relief – loved it, and requested of me two color options for it to use at his leisure. I was happy to oblige.
This was how I – an animator and traditional illustrator – designed my first logo for a client. It was an immensely enjoyable experience, given I applied my animation filmmaking sensibilities to logo design instead of more commonly followed graphic design principles. I also became aware of the many ways in which I could refine this process, though I haven’t yet had the chance to implement these new ways, given no one has so far approached me to design their logo for them ever since.