I dedicated an earlier post entirely to images of my finished stationary system, so feel free to bounce back and forth while reading. I knew what direction I wanted to take for this project pretty early on in the semester: my blog post immediately before Spring Break documented my system's early incarnation, for reference. It has undergone some revisions since then, but no major changes in direction or complete re-dos (other than the necessary re-creation of everything after the loss of my data a few weeks ago). Even though this is a stationary system I will use when seeking a design job, I wanted to give a nod to another interest that is dear to my heart and highly influential over my design work: printmaking! I cut the components for the original logo out of MDF board and printed them multiple times on newsprint to give myself varying textures to work with. After scanning them in, I was able to play with the pieces and their colors and build my system from there. The original stationary ended up feeling a little heavy and over-worked (especially with the pervasive line pattern I was using on everything), and my teal color was printing darker and duller than I wanted (although it was wonderfully bright onscreen!), so I made a few tweaks until I had the current feel, color, and layout, but with the older style logo. Again, I thought it felt very heavy, so I dropped the black outlines and went with the much lighter, fresher-feeling blue dot and white C.
I'm quite happy with my final identity system, and I think it will remain useful for me for some time. I think it fits my personality well while still appearing professional and clean, and it's flexible enough where I will be comfortable using it to apply to a wide range of jobs. It's entirely bleed-free (unlike the former version) and very easy to maintain with little or no work (since I will not have immediate access to the Adobe Suite after leaving Drake). This was a very productive project for me, and a really great way to watch myself refine a system until I found a satisfying solution I can be proud of
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