How a thing gets designed…

I’ve just re -looked at these old logo designs and it shows very smoothly how a design project works.

Firstly I was commissioned to design a flyer logo from XK8, had a chat about what they wanted; a popular indie nightclub without any obvious afilliations with any groups and the name to stay International Hi-Fi.

My first salvo of work was made up of mood boards consisting of four segments of collected cool imagery.
These were a) International (French film stars etc), b) Hi-Fi’s (cool radios, tape machines and technology ), c) Japanese cool stuff (Foreign & technological) and d) Just cool fun stuff (really disparate crazy, fun stuff).
I can’t show these pages for copyright reasons.

After slimming down the idea, the first bits of design were sketched and then worked up on a computer; as I wanted a hard, clean edge I used illustrator. These logos had to be LOUD as drunk people at night needed to see them. I wanted a ‘Hi-Fi lady’ (like the classic Up the Junction ‘Thelma’ flyer for you 90’s clubbers) who would change hairstyles / glasses with each issue of the flyer (see the One Party State Verushka for the forfillment of this idea). The client wanted a reel to reel tape machine. They also like the 3d logo (which was the first idea) – so as you see I’ve got my indie lady to wear reel to reel sunglasses which unspools to become the logo; with some nicely coloured strong type… Blimey.
All this worked fine and the club ran for about 6 months in the revitalised Islington Garage (the owners of the venue and the promoters fell out).

So there you go!