Friday, March 16, 2012

Arranging Letters

One of the classes I had to take ages ago for my graphic design degree was Typography. I am sure it doesn’t say much about me but I had to figure out exactly what that was because I had never heard the term before.

Something I learned during that class was that I loved letters. I loved the shape of them. I loved all the forms they took. I loved how they could convey a feeling by their arrangement or send a message by their boldness or delicacy.

I still love letters. I could spend an entire day perusing font websites. Funky, fresh, wild or serious. Aged or vintage, rough or streamlined. I truly get a thrill from all the different incarnations one word or set of letters can take.

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So it is with excitement that I dive into designing logos with letters for people or organizations when the opportunity presents itself.  Here are a couple of the most recent ones I have created.

The Orlando Youth Wind Society (OYWS) is a non-profit organization that my son and his wife started to provide unique and professional level performance opportunities for young musicians. My favorite bit in this design is how the ‘Y’ takes on the character of a conductor with the ‘O’ as the head.

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This next one is for Two Birds – a small business my sisters have creating a line of colorful purses, bags, wallets and various other fabric items. This design came to mind almost wholly finished. I just had to tweak it some.  The detail of the bird’s feathers following the line of the letter T is my favorite part on this one.

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The photos below show just a couple of the many items they make.              

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These kinds of things inspire me to take a second look at my own and see how I might approach it all these years later. I find it much harder to design for myself which is why I will probably end up at the sewing machine instead of doodling around with letters on the computer.  It’s just as well.  I have a show to go to in 8 days, uh, 7.75 days – tick, tick, tick.

5 comments:

  1. Dear Ginger, How I love your letters and their designs. Just fabulous, especially the little bear face.
    You are one clever cookie.
    Hugs
    Kay

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  2. Oh how fun! I too could spend days immersed in font sites, in fact i had over 5,000 of them installed at one point, and then discovered Photoshop was NOT happy with that many, so I had to move them all out and start again. Maybe I need another browse though...

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  3. How fun, Ginger! My favorite of your bearbits lettering is the second one with the little heart! So sweet! I love the bags your sisters make - would it be possible to post their website link?! Hugs, Janice

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  4. Ginger! You are one of the most creative people, I ever seen! I love your blog, and everything that you make! These letters are beutiful, and I loved the logo with the teddybear on it! It is soo really perfect and pretty:) I also loved the OYWS one:)Please go on being so creative!
    Greetings, Jucó

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  5. Playing with fonts is so much fun. It is hard to decide which ones to use. Thank you for sharing Ginger. Happy St. Patrick's day.

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