Graphic Identities

June 2021 | Graphic Design, Visual Identity

Overview: 'Graphic Identities' is a visual identity system designed in response to a brief provided during the intermediate graphic design course at UNSW.

The brief: The brief asked for a visual identity to represent the 2021 exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum titled 'Graphic Identities'. The exhibition was comprised of archived works from eight Australian-based designers from disciplines whose visual communications impacted the Australian creative industry. The final deliverable required a concept statement, title treatment, colour and typography specifications, entry wall, exhibition, guide, and a digital entry.

The outcome: My final identity surrounded a logo that consisted of circles, curved and straight lines to form the title “Graphic Identities”. With a style closer to a graphic icon than a wordmark the tight spaces and connected letters flow together cohesively. For example, the “d” and “p” join like an infinity sign to help highlight how these designers from the past continue to influence today’s design industry. My choice of bold, calm blue tones and geometric sans serif typography with no sharp edges created a rounded design to symbolise visual communication with circles referencing the centre of one’s identity.

Final Deliverables

Visual Identities and System Specifications:

Primary Identity with and without wordmark.

Secondary identities for the Primary Identity

The colour palette features teal/dark blue colour ia supported by 5 additional tones including white, black and greys. According to David McCandless “Color in Culture” from a western perspective the blue can suggest the 8 designers’ freedom and intelligence with the black tones cementing authority and eternity.

McCandless, D. Colours in Cultures — Information is Beautiful. Information is Beautiful. Retrieved 28 June 2021, from https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/.

The Sans serif typography used within the design is “highly geometric, constructed from mechanical curves” (Barnum, Haddock, Hicks, 2011) complementing the icon's thin lines and geometric nature. The typeface is easy to read and does not draw attention away from the overall design. The thin line weight of the logo can be increased to help remain visually engaging when scaled, this change must be applied to all lines if not "the design will look less credible” (Barnum, Haddock, Hicks, 2011) and will lack continuity.

Barnum, A., Haddock, S., & Hicks, A. (2011). Graphic design: Australian style manual. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Entry Wall:

An exhibition entry wall was required as a part of the Visual Identity system. The brief specialised it must include: "title treatment, graphic elements and 100 words of text applied to the design of an entry wall measuring 3200mm high x 6000mm wide. NB use a person to show scale".

Exhibition Guide:

One of the deliverables the brief required was a cover for an exhibition guide. I enjoyed playing with the identity system I produced to create a simplistic yet attractive cover design.

The final guide required: "a title treatment, graphic elements and 'Presented by Powerhouse Museum' applied to the cover of an exhibition guide with an A5 finished size".

Digital Screen:

The brief required the title treatment and graphic elements to be applied to a digital entry screen that measured 1920px x 1080px (16:9 aspect ratio) in portrait and landscape format. It also had to include the exhibition dates (4 September 2021 - 27 February 2022) or 'on now' and 'Powerhouse Museum' dates (14 September 2021 - 27 February 2020) or 'on now' and 'Powerhouse Museum'.

This digital screen imagined that these digital elements (the transparent circles) would be animated to move slowly throughout the screen to create a dynamic effect and increase visual interest.

Development Process

Visual Identities and System Specifications:

When approaching the early stages of this project I began by exploring a series of options for the logo and developing two outcomes through a series of activities such as sketching, digital mock-up and typography experimentation.

Annotated process, type exploration and overview of abandoned idea:

Annotated examples of development of final identity:

Entry Wall:

The first big implementation task I tackled was the exhibition wall. During this process, I slowly developed a colour palate working from blue tones from my iterations. It is a calm colour and the circles in the design represent finding a centre, like a grounding point of one's identity. This connects my mind to the calm flow of water that inspired me to use blue and off-black tones.

Click on the images to view the annotations.