Strange Pursuits

Recently I had the pleasure of completing a commission for a friend of mine in need of two logos. She works for  Miami-Dade Libraries archiving their collections of old 16mm films, and once week curates a selection for view under the name "Strange Pursuits." She sent me some images of old bookplates as an example of the gestalt was looking for, and also requested some specific elements to be incorporated into the design: waves, mangroves, and Florida limestone. I came up with two logos: the first logo incorporated the requested imagery in a circular composition, and the second taking more of an inspiration from the bookplates.

I drew both compositions on 14x12 inch bristol board with an 01 Micron Pen, Pentel FP5F and FP5M Brush Pen, and ink brush with Higgins Black Magic ink to fill larger black areas in quickly and precisely. The Limestone logo was just a matter of getting everything measured, and taking my time on each element. Slowly building them up until the texture and value were too my liking. If i overdid any particular part, it was fixable either with a little bit of gesso on a fine tip brush, or digitally.

The second logo was a little more straight forward. I did some investigating about the projector she was using and found that it projected in 4:3 aspect ratio, and also found a cool diagram of the innards of it. I did a line drawing of the camera's guts in a box that measures 8:6 so it maintains the aspect ratio of the real life projection. I also wanted to emphasize the shapes I was seeing in the diagram: mostly circles and rectangles. Then I added the one triangle going from left to right to indicate the projection. I hand lettered in a stretched Serif font on the top and bottom (second image in carousel).

After the drawings were completed I had them scanned where I was able to do some minor digital touching up: mostly just adjusting contrast and getting rid of any stray lines. In the case of the Projector Logo I ended up redoing the lettering with a Serif font in Inkscape, which is a freeware version of Adobe Illustrator I would recommend to anyone not willing to pay Adobe's outrageous prices. Overall, the client was delivered what she wanted, with plenty of variation for however she may use the logos.

Contact me if you'd like to commission your very own hand drawn logo or design!