Anna's Online Journal!

During our lesson today we looked at creating colour palettes and swatches from images that we like.

The majority of images I chose were along a nautical theme as the theme of the High Seas brand is the sea and nautical things. I wanted to find various different images to choose colours from including interior design, graphic design and photos of things at the seaside.

Here are my images and colours:

Different saturations of blue mixed with a white and black and then extra colour like orange seem to be most common with the colours that I have chosen. I think I prefer the pastel colours to the brighter ones and feel I am most likely to use these in my design.

As well as playing about with the typefaces I might use, I thought I should also try drawing some nautical themed images on Illustrator to see whether I should create them on that or hand draw them. Here’s what I made:

I think I might draw out the creatures I use on my page and then scan them into Illustrator as I feel it would be easier to add detail using a pencil and then allow Illustrator to go over it – it takes a long while to achieve much in Illustrator.

It was, however, interesting to see how drawing on my trackpad is and how putting simple shapes together can create a ship steering wheel.

Before I even begin to think about designing my logo and rebrand for High Seas, I needed to have a little play about with various different serif and sans serif typefaces to see what I liked. I also decided to arc each of the fonts by 10% to see how they looked, as I have noticed that other nautical themed companies arc their text too. Here are the different typefaces I tried out:

I am torn between using a typeface like Baskerville which is a strong, traditional font with small flicks on the letters, or a font that looks more like a tattoo or calligraphy like Brush Script. I am also torn between using an arc or not, and so will have to try out both when designing my company’s logo.

Here are a range of images I found that have inspired me or that I may use myself in my logo or website design:

 

 

I am looking to have a large octopus somewhere in my design and so was trying to find a drawing similar to the image in my head. I want the octopus to have long and wavy tentacles with quite a lot of detail. I like the shapes and positions of all of the octopus’ that I found and that is why I have chosen them for inspiration.

Other typical nautical shapes include anchors, compasses, ships and ship steering wheels. As the tattoo company is called ‘High Seas’, it is important that the nautical theme is used within the design.

Before I create my own corporate identity package, I thought I had better look at the Shoreditch competition:

 

 

Cloak and Dagger have a one-off tattoo parlour in Shoreditch. They have a range of traditional and neo-traditional tattoo artists and will more or less create anything that the customer wants. I like the logo for this shop – it is quite informal and bold. I like the use of orange and the rust colour as they are not very stereotypical for tattoo logos. The alternating text works well separating the two words apart. The company’s little logo next to their name in the tab is an anchor, which partly ties in with the High Seas nautical theme.

The website is very simplistic – they have placed their images in circles and the text and background is just black and white with a hint of orange. I feel the website is actually quite boring and does not convey any ideas of tattoos and Shoreditch to you at all.

 

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Good Times Tattoo are another independent tattoo shop in Shoreditch. I like their take on the ‘I <3 NY’ logo that has become a global success. The font appears to have been typed out on the screen, like it has been written with a different kind of ink, which could be said to be ironic. I like how it is just black and white too as most tattoos follow this colour scheme too.

Their website is also very clean and simple with just photos of the parlour, tattoo artists and work that the artists have done. The clear, white background could give an indication that the shop is a clean and trustworthy shop which can be a big issue when people are choosing where to get their tattoo done. There is also a map of where the shop is, which is hopeful for first timers.

 

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Price is Shoreditch’s first tattoo shop. I like the use of the simple, single lined logo which appears to be a combination of a heart and some infinity shapes. The well spaced, capital, sans serif font compliments the simple logo well, giving the shop a clean and simple feel again. I like the introduction of the light blue/teal colour to the black and white too.

 

Their website looks a little bit like a Tumblr blog with the large amount of photos in it. I like how they have centralised the type at the top of the site and feel that this website is slightly more appealing to the eye than some of the other sites I looked at.

 

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I feel the logo for this tattoo shop is stronger than some of the others, although conveys a different image. It is darker and more gothic with the serif scroll-like font. The type makes me think of the Sons of Anarchy design, and I would say it is more masculine than the others. It also suggests they draw different kinds of tattoos to the other shops.

 

I feel the homepage for this parlour is a bit bare and could do with some images added to it. The black and white colour scheme is strong with the textured background and gothic look though.

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I have found a nautical themed tattoo parlour in Shoreditch. The main website is similar to this ‘enter’ page, with a scroll style background and images of mermaids and other sea-themed objects around it. I am not a massive fan of the traditional pirate style that they have gone for and think that High Seas will look really different to this despite them sharing a nautical theme.