603 - Brief 01 - Initial Identity Ideas - Logo

Now I felt pretty set on using Eurostile for the typeface to represent AV8 as it does fit the whole underground music scene vibe well - industrial yet technological, hard-hitting and bold yet sleek.
And it showed through my initial symbol experiments how the angles and forms of the letters do actually fit together very well too.

Eurostiles wide forms with squared curves are reminiscent of the shapes of cathode ray tube televisions, or the windows of airplanes (AVIATE / AV8) and high-speed passenger railcars. By these associations, but also by its own careful composition, Eurostile has sustained the ability to give copy a dynamic, technological feel. It works well for headlines and short bits of text, poster work, and, on the side of space-going vehicles (Very industrial and underground). The family spans three widths: Condensed, normal, and Extended, in three weights each. Its normal width includes companion obliques. This adds additional versatility across all medias, with an outline style to also accompany the family.

I love the direction I am heading in with the identity as I feel it is already creating this hard-hitting, sleek tone of voice which is authoritative as well as structured and justified.  And now you can see how the reference back to the stencil is being worked in to the designs.. 

I took the above final layouts to a crit group to see which were peoples favourites and no-one could decide! Everyone could agree on the relevance and backing story to the stencil justification, but couldn't decide if they like the top or bottom right the most. But it was suggested how these need to now be mocked up inside an object perhaps, for use on the various mediums...

I experimented further with the bounding shapes considering hexagons and wackier / irregular shapes, not just 4-sided ones!

As I pushed this experimentation it was clear how the squared and circular options were most impactful as a music brand.
- I even began considering how each section of the letterform created by the stencil effect could be animated to come together representing each genre featured on AV8 coming together to create this one collective.

But I was wary of how I didn't want it to remind people of brands such as the likes of these.
- However it isn't a bad thing as these are very current and trendy brands which do fit into my target audiences demographic well I would've thought.



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I was able to narrow it down to these experiments being the strongest. 

But feedback was necessary to make the final decision:

The circle was justified as being most impactful and relevant for a music-related brand due to the initially stated concept of circular records and how this went on to influence the shape of album arts, etc. 

The first option was striking as just the individual letterforms, but it was agreed that it does create a more developed response being fitted together. With the forms of the A & V complimenting eachother, they do effectively create a new character to represent the AV on a whole - by dropping the V slightly it has created this space for the smaller 8 to fit into the whole form, which does feel very considered and justified as a final logo shape.

As my experimentations pushed this even further with the 3rd option, stripping it back and creating a lone shape to represent the brand - this felt intriguing and ambiguous but wasn't necessarily strikingly obvious to the audience of its relevance of this shape created. 

The stencil effect then applied to this form honed in on the overall design and referenced it back to the brands origins effectively. 

- colour schemes?
will initially approach the colour scheme for the brand as very neutral with only hard blacks and whites to create that initial contrast (on any media) - this reflects to the audience our straight-forward mission statement of how we are what we are, no complications or distractions, just passion for good music and boosting local artists. 

It doesn't need to be any more than that. 
- The grey used through my experiments will be the happy-medium between the black & white, creating that balance of combination for when necessary.

- tone of voice and style reflective of underground scene