OUGD403 Study Task 2 - Symbol

YSP

(Yorkshire Sculpture Park)

The task - to use only a symbol to create a logo that would fit alongside the original type.

I think to use a sculpture from the park itself would be too obvious, too specific and it could be taken out of the park at any point.

This meant I would have to look for either permanent art or something different.

Bleed -

For inspiration on branding I looked towards the company Bleed. I had previously looked into the company for a task the week before. Going back to one of the branding tasks that the company had for Monier I looked into how they drew inspiration. Using parts of the

building the business is based in they managed to draw out different shapes for a logo

http://www.bleed.no/#monier

design. As you can see in the image below they have taken out the shapes of the windows on the side of the building and numbered them according to size then used them in different ways till they came out with a final design. I think the idea behind this is amazing and I’m going to look into similar inspiration for my own designs.

http://www.bleed.no/#monier

Henry Moore -

I looked into the history of the park next and the artists that are featured there. Henry Moore is one of the most influential sculptors for the park and his tools are even featured

there. I thought this would be a good idea to look into the tools that made the sculptures as that’s a good metaphor for the park and the art within it.

Barbara Hepworth -

Another influential artist is Barbara Hepworth. As you drive into the car park of the park these sculptures almost welcome you. I thought that would be a good way to link the logo

into the park. You would know where it was and it brings the work of the park into the logo.

James Turrel -

Turrel’s Sky Space is one of my favourite features in the park and it’s also a permanent piece. This I think makes it a brilliant idea to use parts of the Sky Space to inspire a design

for a logo. I will look into the architecture of the building and see how the space inspires be when I’m in there on our visit.

Experimentation

Above is a shot of some of my initial ideas for the symbols.

The top piece although looking a bit like The Starship Enterprise, has been created from a aerial view of the park. I thought this would be a great idea to incorporate the main hub of the park into the logo design and tie it all together. The shape uses negative space effectively like the brief asked and uses geometric shapes.

The next piece is of Turrel's Sky Space, one of my favourite things about the sculpture park. I took the three entrances to create shapes that I think I could've taken further to create something inspired by the DCM logo. 

The next piece is again park of the Sky Space, this time using the idea of the cut out from the top of the building to create something that uses negative space but not only that the original building reflects it looking up into the sky.

I said I didn't think it would be a good idea to use one of the pieces from the park but I think thought I best give it a try otherwise I would never know if it worked. I chose this piece because it's from one of the Sculpture Parks main contributors and inspirers, Barbara Hepworth. The piece is placed in the car park entrance which is where most visitors will first enter the park and therefore one of the first welcoming pieces, I thought this to be fitting with using it as the logo.

The last design is that of Henry Moore's hammer. Pretty much the soul of the park Moore inspired the whole idea from the start and his work is featured all over. I wanted to use a very basic shape and have a two tone colour scheme so that negative space could be used to the full effect of the piece.

Development

I decided to go ahead with the top design as I thought it fit the brief better than the rest and thought it was a bit different. The shapes were odd and they made you want to know more about it, it's only something you would notice when seeing an aerial view of the park which would mean that you would have to Google it therefore getting you more intrigued.

Finalised Design

I took the design further by removing the typography completely and leaving just the symbol. This I think helped the design to stand out on it's own and really use up all the space it had. I reversed the colours so that you could see it could be used in multiple different ways and therefore would be transferable.

I think if I were to do this task again then I would experiment with the shapes a bit more and see if I could push the design further. I could have a look more into the colour scheme and also see how and where the design could be placed.