Time to freshen up the look of the site again, and I’ve been inspired by the current zeitgeist that has everybody remembering FDR and the Great Depression to try to come up with some visual thematics that would be reminiscent of WPA posters and other graphics. Not so much the WWII propaganda stuff that got played to death by bloggers at the time of the beginning of the Iraq War, but stuff like this or this.
I’ve got four first-draft ideas to show you after the jump.
These first two are pretty similar. I like the second one better, personally, although I need to figure out a way to work the customary blue-black-green color scheme into it.
This one works in the blue, but needs to include the green. The slanted elements are a common theme in WPA style art. There’s also typically a lot of geometric styling and/or abstract stuff, and I might consider transforming the blue box into something a little more stylized in that manner, then adding an equally abstracted green geometric shape.
This one feels a little more “Jazz Age” to me than it does “WPA style”, but there are still plenty of examples of similar elements in the posters and graphics I have been looking at. This particular logo reminds me of period book jacket designs.
I’ll probably cook up a few more over the weekend and share them with you sometime next week, but I would genuinely appreciate feedback, ideas, preferences, examples of similar art or blogs that have used a similar style…pretty much anything.
I like option #1 best. It sort of has a retro…early airlines look to it and the colors make it nice too.
I’m with Karan. I like the first one best.
Make that three – I like the first, but there seems to be a tiny bit too much space between the O and N, as well as the N and E. Probably not anything you can do, and possibly just an illusion.
Yeah, that’s the work of Adobe Illustrator. I can fuss with the kerning a little to see.
I like the font in #2 and #4. Not so much a fan of the slanted logo concept, although I do understand what you’re going for. Of the choices, I’d either go for #2 (with the colors worked in somehow) or #4 rotated to rectify the slant. I think I’d like #4 best that way.
Okay, have a look at these variations:
They combine a little bit of the things people seem to like, including the slant (which I like).
I have a couple more variations to whiz up and will post them as comments as well.
Of the two latest, I would choose the top variation. The three streamlined bars in the lower of the two strikes me more as Jet Age or early Space Age
I think I like the first revision better, too.
Now how about these:
How do you see these being integrated into an overall page design? And, just curious, but do you know the angle of rotation from horizontal for the lower one?
How do you see these being integrated into an overall page design?
As usual, as part of a banner at the top of every page. In the case of the slanted one, it would be in the upper left hand corner with room to the right for a menu bar and additional graphic elements. The straight horizontal one could be in either corner or centered.
do you know the angle of rotation from horizontal for the lower one?
I don’t. I used the free rotation tool in Illustrator and eyeballed it to fit the corner of a 1028x728px webpage.