Ground and Letterforms

Idea

I started the project with choosing the best letters I could came up with. The M and G of course, representing my first name Mikaela and last name Gunnstedt. I must say it turned out to be a real fun project. Especially to do something with my own name. It felt professional, like maybe I could use some of these in the future, and that felt good.

When I first sat down to think about how I wanted to represent my two letters I thought of myself. How am I? And what do I think look good? Not as easy as I thought, even though it should be easy since its just me, and I should know that about myself I guess I thought. But anyway I started to do some sketches when I sat on class one day, just small ones, but that gave me the ideas of what kind of logotype for my initials I wanted to create. The amazing dafont.com really helped me out, to download several fonts to work with in Illustrator and Indesign. Once I went to Dafont, I was stuck there. I think I sat for hours and just downloaded fonts and got a lot of inspiration. I got really impressed on how many talented people there is out there who create all these beauti-ful different fonts with so much perfection.

My idea for my two letters was to make both simple ones with the figure and ground method. The other idea was to create more beautiful logos, with more curls. I also wanted to work with both Serif letters and Sans serif. Usually I tend to like these two de-pending on what they should represent. The Serif font seems more old and gracious while the Sans serif feels more modern.

sketches

sketches

sketches

sketches

sketches

process

TM

First I created this. I must say I liked it, I wanted to capture the simpleness and at the same time the grace with the thin and thich lines of the fonts.

I typed in the uppercase M and then the the uppercase G and then I made them into vectror graphics so I could move and make the relationship between them to work. I rotated the letter G so it would be at the same curve as the letter M.

I also changed the fill of the strokes, so I made the G dissapear a little bit.

process

I used the font called “Simply*Glamorous” from Dafont.com and here are the original letters.

The sidelines helped me see how my characters related to each other.

process

Simple design - White fill color and black outlines. Color - Pastel colors to make it look retro.

TM TM

TM

process

MG

MGExamples of letterforms from my sketches I didnt like so much, they didnt turned out to be so good digitaly.

MG

process

Second of all I created this. This reminded a little bit of the first letterforms I made, but this time I tried to work more with the positive and negative space.

I typed in the uppercase M and then the the uppercase G like the same as before and then I made them into vectror graphics so I could move and make the relationship between them work. I placed the letter G under the letter M and moved it so they would blend together.

GM TM

I used the font called “Exmouth” from Dafont.com and here are the original letters.

M G

GM TM

process

GM TM GM TM

GM TMGM TM

GM TM

GM TM

process

I worked with these colors to keep my “retro” style and these pastels color matched well with the design.

I also tried to place my letters on top of boxes and filled them with colors to try something new and I kept the “tail” of the M here.

process

The third letterform I created I wanted to make different from the previous two. I wanted it to look more modern and really make my eyes work with the negative space.

I wanted an font that would be large and bold to create my logotype.

I used the font called “Blackoak Std” and here are the original letters.

GM

MG

TM

process

MG

TM

MG

TM

I worked with different colors here aswell and I kind of sticked to the light colors, but I also tried to brake it with a darker color.

It was fun to see how my logotype looked so different just from changing colors. Also since my middle name is Isabelle it could work to illustrate it with both the negative space in some of these logotypes and the M could actually look like an I aswell.

MG

TMMG

TM

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MG

TM

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MG TM

My fourth lettorform turned out to be pretty cool with the white space in between the letters. I kept the M on top and the G under. The white stripes in my letters where already a part of the font I choosed, but when I made the G to disappear a little bit I just placed a white box on top.

I made the M a little bigger then the G so it would “pop” out more.

I used the font called “Stencil Std” and here are the original letters.

MG

process

MG TM

MG TM

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MG TM

MG TM

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GMTM

The last logotype looked really nice I think. I liked how the curves of both letters just perfectly matched to-gether when I moved and placed them on top of each other. It was like they were ment to fit together like that.

I used the font called “Amaldema” from Dafont.com and here are the original letters.

MG

MGTM

process

GMTM

GMTM

process

GMTM

GMTM

colorFor my color palette I wanted to stick to my theme, the retro and oldstyle colors. I tried to find dull colors that would represent my personality.

I usually tends to love only black and I think the simpleness of the color fits to most logotypes. The combination of white and black can create really nice contrast especially when it comes to figure and ground combinations.

colorIt was fun to experiment with the colors I chose and see how they could match with each other and also how a particular color combination could represent my initials. Different colors has a different meaning of what they should represent.

I liked the retro look because it felt like me.

result

When I look back at my project and see all these different logotypes I can tell M and G match well together. I had fun working with them and when you just get started and feel your inspiration its hard to quit. You see new patterns and new color combinations and to feel that creative with something personal feels really good.

I actually had a hard time picking just one of these letterforms, I liked a hole bunch of them. The only thing is some of my logotypes didn’t exactly match with figure and ground. The letterforms that didn’t had that principle I actually liked the most. But since that was the main thing about the assignment I picked one with figure and ground that I also liked. The most important thing was to make some logo-type with my initials that would represent me both by the look of it and also by the colors, and my final hopefully did that.

I picked the one where the G is “dissapear” into the white negative space and the brown box I placed behind make it just pop out enough to see its the letter G. The colors match well together with the retro style and also to have one brighter color and one darker to get the right contrasts.

final

MG

TM