Typophile

School Project: Clock Logo critique

Trevor Woods

Hi there!

This is my first time posting, although I have known about this site for quite a while. I don't know why I hadn't signed up before, but I felt recently like this project warrents it.

I am a senior at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I am working on a semester long project which requires us to build two clocks. The clocks have to be based on a similar idea, but they but be different from each other visually.

My clock series is going to be called Lunar Solar, or Lunar / Solar. The clocks must keep accurate time, but it doesn't have to be easy to read them. The clocks are going to be backlit, and will have rotating elements that are mostly black printed on a transparent piece of plastic, which will at times hide the numerals or the hands of the clock, making it hard to read. The idea is basically "such is the nature of the moon and sun" I suppose, being that it's not always easy to observe either one, but sometimes (full moon or lunar eclipse) it can be beautiful.

these are the three logotypes, which are very rough, that I am considering. The top two felt like they needed the "/". I'm not sure that I like it on the top and the bottom, as it doesn't make sense. I like throwing off the balance of the AR AR with a single /, which I should have shown in hindsight, but that felt somewhat awkward at the same time. Perhaps it will just take more fine-tuning to be resolved.

The upper two are both Gotham, the bottom one is Didot small caps.

I removed the cross bars on the As because I liked the idea of the O being the only letter with a counter. However, when I made the R of the gotham a continuous stroke as I did on the Didot R, it made me want to lose my dinner. The Didot also doesn't feel like it NEEDS the /, but I may add one anyways.

I also like the inverted A (or V) in place of the U, it speaks to roman numerals which relates back to the clock. I might be trying too hard with that though, what do you think?

I haven't spent enough time to feel comfortable with the letterspacing either, but I thought I would throw these up for some initial feedback, if you are willing.

Thank you all ahead of time!

FeeltheKern

I'm immediately drawn to the second one -- I don't have a solid reason why, it's just aesthetically pleasing. The one element that feels out of place is the R at the end of both words. It feels a bit heavy, like it's wanting to be more old New York industrial, with that heavy bowl sitting on top, and the rest of the words feel like they're Laser engraved into the space shuttle, which I think is the correct feel for this based on what you said about the sun and moon. I would suggest just modifying that R a bit, so it's more like the Didot R below it, where it's not closed.

FeeltheKern

One other thought: you might want to create some subtle inktraps for that N in LUNAR, because it feels a bit heavy in comparison to the other letters. Just where the diagonal bar intersects with the two stems, it gets a bit dark. But overall, I really like this logo!

praitsidis

Hi Trevor,

Looking at what you've done already, I like the first variation most. That said, I think that lunar and solar are very contrasting words so it would be interesting to perhaps play with or accent that contrast. Not too fond of the Didot version as it looks too classical, Roman...

Nice overall work though!

Frode Bo Helland

Have you considered shifting the O counter to mimic a solar eclipse?

kingdom_graphics

the third looks most like a roman, ancient chiseled representation, thus the 'u' and 'a' shapes make sense to be rendered like they are with v's. i would keep the kerning like it is but manipulate the r to have the interior point connect. it would keep it tight and obvious, since you are asking your viewer to consider the abstract nature of the u and a, they might overthink the r. that last bit of advice may be overkill but worth a look at least.

In the spirit of unbridled creativity,

Troy Vera
Kingdom Graphics
http://www.kingdomgraphics.biz
Yahoo IM: kingdom_graphics
Skype: kingdom_graphics

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