ELIO
Visual Identity
Brand Identity
Stationary
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Elio is an author in the sci-fi genre with a fascination of the human experience and questioning the realm of intelligence. He prefers the simplicity of black and white, claiming that it allows imagery to transform, twist, and tantalize the mind with just shapes and shadows. ​
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Project Goals:
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Create a brand identity that can transform and become recognizable just by shape and element placement alone
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Aid Elio in his upcoming promotions with "The Goddess" with the newly created visual identity
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Find a solution to signing books that will not aggravate his arthritis
The Process
Creating Elio began with the best type of brainstorming: scribbling. Since I was working with an author brand, I wanted to start with script font. I played around with thick and thin markers, trying to visualize the embossing of the author's stamp I would make by the end.
After several attempts that landed in the realm of "illegible," "too Eastern Asian," and attempting to make the "E" into a skull, I decided on staying simple.
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I researched fonts that looked like the handwriting of Elio, which can be seen on the top left corner of the right hand paper. I landed debated between the known Hatteria and Felicity, but decided they melded better with the fashion industry. I eventually went with a lesser known, Jedira.
I liked the Jedira font, but I felt that the letters were too disconnected. The "E" had a nice tail and I wondered what it would look like using that swoop as a connector between letters. I landed on a variation that mirrored cursive. To create contrast, I separated the "EL" and "IO" and then connected those two pairs with their individual swoops. The column for the "L" and "I" are the same length to create a unique focal point in the logo. The separation also gave the logo a neat arrangement that would read well on a stamp.
The Book Cover: "The Goddess"
The second part to this project was the book cover. Elio disclosed to me that the themes of The Goddess were evolution, passage of time, life and death, and technology. I hunted around Pinterest and found that there was a lot of overlap of meaning for symbols such as skulls, vines, gears, and wires.
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Vines, such as the Blue Bindweed is a symbol of evolution as it is a climbing plant that has adapted to its surroundings and also represents life since it is flora. Gears are a piece of technology that also powers clocks which represent time. Wire connects everything together and are used heavily in AI and Cyborg art and skulls, representing death, are also used abundantly.
I also drew inspiration from linoleum stamps. The right side of the skull can be removed from the left and be used as an embellishment for social media posts or bookmarks like seen in the top slider.
Book Spine Design
By the end, I realized I hit all of the project goals, but I felt that something was missing. The logo and the illustration stood well by themselves and fit the brand identity, but still felt disconnected.
Then, it occurred to me. I had not designed the book spine. First, I played with using gold as an accent color, but it quickly became distracting. Then I tried the right side of the skull, but found it too busy. Stumped, I went back to look at the logo documents.
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That's where I found the original blocking shapes I'd used to align "Elio" with the grid. Now I had the basic shape of the logo and the style of the illustration in one idea. I lined the edges of the book spine and found that it fit well and didn't distract from the more intricate motif on the front.
TRIALS
Alignment
Colors & Details
Perfectionism
Elio was a very rewarding project to work on. But, like most good things, the challenges lay in the details. Since the overall style was "handwritten and hand-drawn" I had to put aside the idea that it needed to be perfect with every stroke and line. Turning off "snap to grid" was hard, especially since none of the elements I illustrated were a line or a box.
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Another challenge was the logo, itself. Specifically, settling on a simple design and trying not to reinvent the wheel. I also fussed with putting gold as an accent, but that direction ended up reading more as a craft artist logo, which lead to frustration and a needing a day away from the project. The space, however, did help in giving me a new perspective. Now, I make sure to step away, even for a few minutes if such frustration arises.