Assignment and Process
This week’s assignment was to develop a personal logo and style guide. Before settling on anything, I did a lot of doodling. I knew I wanted my initials, NK, to be the basis of the logo. They’re both very angular letters with triangles forming their shapes, which I ended up gravitating towards while doodling. I ended up coming back to one set of doodles over and over: I used only triangles to create the outlines of my initials in whitespace. I decided to go forward with this idea.
Logo Inspiration
One of my defining qualities is my adventurousness. I’m extremely curious and tend to go to great distances, both literally and figuratively, to learn new things. As a result, I’ve accumulated some seemingly disparate life experience; “seemingly” being the key word. In my mind, these pieces that looked different— whether industries and jobs, cultures and countries, or pieces of artwork across media— were really more similar than they appeared and fit into a coherent whole. The logo I landed on is made of triangles of mostly different sizes, book-ended by two triangles that appear to be snow-capped mountains. The whitespace between the triangles form my initials. Yet the logo almost asks to be turned, to be looked at different ways. Viewed in any orientation, it directs your eye towards another direction. I like it in black and white, with Sofia Pro Light type for any text.
After turning the image 90 degrees clockwise, the elements that make up the K are effective as a standalone logo. I could imagine this as an app icon. A lot of my qualities are expressed in this one image, even if my name is not. The small triangles framing the logo point in different directions, but always up — perhaps symbolizing my fundamentally optimistic approach to life. The mountain is framed here, putting my outdoors + adventurous qualities front and center. With color, the sunset or sunrise seems to emerge from behind the mountain; something that has been a source of inspiration in a number of works already this semester and in life in general.
