Back in May Ben Delano asked me to take a look a logo he put together for a new podcast he was starting and to give him my input on it.
Being a visual person, I sometimes find it easier to convey the idea graphically rather then spelling it out in words. As they say, a picture is worth 1,000. Once I get started however, my perfectionist streak tends to come out and I often wind up completing the design. That’s not to say I do this for everyone, so I hope I don’t get a ton of tweets and emails asking for my opinion in the hopes of free work.
Ben was one of the lucky few. Looking at his initial logo (below-right) I found it to be very rough. The typeface used looked unfinished, the colour combination was a bit too basic, and the composition left the elements competing for the same mind space.
To begin this project, as someone not entirely familiar with the genre, I began researching punk album covers to find commonalities among them and the overall style of design within the genre. The two that influenced this logo the most were the typography and colour pallets.
The type on most albums was either distressed and misaligned, or very sketchy almost scribbled; the latter obviously was the influence for the project, and I hand drew the type with various references from my research. The result is very evocative and distinctly punk in style and arrangement.
For the colour pallet I chose to go with bright, almost neon, pastels common in the genre. Here it’s “electric blue” but it could be swapped out with a hot pink, vibrant chartreuse or a punchy yellow. The blue however is the most neutral of the choices and highlights the type nicely against the black.
One final element I decided to include, and retain from Ben’s original attempt, was the star motif. I hand drew a few stars which make up the background pattern of the album art, and included one in the singular letter A. It also makes a great graphic element for use in wallpapers and elements of a website.
My last note on this project is about the composition of the type is more personal preference, but I decided it looked better as two lines instead of three as in Ben’s, and was a more accurate representation of how the title would be spoken.
I’m not sure if Ben intends to use it, but I figured I’d talk about it none the less. And if you’re into punk music make sure to subscribe to Ben’s podcast Punk A Day.
