Mindscape In Cyberspace

These 4 logos shown in the above image, are my favorites among all the logos I have designed in recent past. I guess, the main reason for these logos being my favorites, is the fact that I have enough creative freedom while designing them.

Details below: [Clockwise from top-left]

Logo for Altered Black:

Altered Black is a Bangalore-based creative design house, providing Business-intelligent Creative Design Solution for corporates. The idea behind this unusual name of the company, is very simple, as they explain it on their website, “Black altered and altered to black - a double-edged idea that plays on the possibility and impossibility of change. Black cannot be altered. What is impossible is what makes a quest possible. Design, for us, is a journey, a quest to make the impossible possible, and the possible perfect. With dynamism as a core value, to alter and itself be altered, Altered Black is a company that evolves and changes as it alters the world of Design.” I was really excited when I came up with idea of ‘altering’ the ‘black’ by hiding the ‘c’ of the ‘black’, behind the black ink splat. Also, here I have tried to go beyond the conventional idea of standardized corporate color scheme and designed the same logo with the ‘BLACK’ written in 7 different colors, each representing a basic hue. All of them are being used in various materials. Even the employees of Altered Black are allowed to choose the color of the logo on their business card, from these 7 pre-defined corporate hues. The strong message and recognizable visual of the logo, make all logos look consistent and related, in spite of having different colors. The attached image shows the logo in Green, Orange and Blue. You can view few other colors here.

Visit Altered Black Site here

Logo for High Resolution:

It was actually fun to create a logo for a closed group of digital and new media artists, called ‘High Resolution’. The group is primarily aimed to organize online and offline exhibitions of digital art and new media art. All they wanted to have a symbol that is very simplistic, informal and loose, yet represents the technical as well as conceptual meaning of this term ‘high resolution’, a highly popular and often used term in the industry. I put a question before them and before myself as well. What represents ‘the highest resolution’ in our known real world? The answer was obvious - the Sun. And I got my symbol! Now, what could be a simplistic, informal and loose way to represent the visual of Sun and the name - ‘High Resolution’ as text? Who is simple and informal enough to do this? Again the answer came very promptly! Our friend’s 4 year old son, who was hopping and running around us through out the entire session. With little effort, patience and few candies, we got 2 suns and all letters of ‘high resolution’ on 6 different sheets of paper, in various sizes, by him. After that, only scanning and little retouching was needed to get the final logo ready.

Logo for South Asia Center, UPENN:

The logo for South Asia Center of University of Pennsylvania is probably the simplest of this lot, again the most challenging, too. It was really tough to identify one single graphical motif with pan S. Asia feel, considering the vastly diverse culture of South Asia and combining multi-cultural characteristics South Asia in one single alpha-glyph symbol. I realized that it would be easier, if I can go beyond the present time and look into the historical past of S. Asia, for the desired motif. I started looking for graphical symbols in ancient architectural remains of S. Asia, as I beileve, ‘architecture’ is the area, where lots of cross-cultural interactions happened, in recent and distant past, in this region. And, soon I came up with this symbol, simulating and combining the visual charactersitics of various graphical motifs, from the mosaics of Taj Mahal (India, 17th Century), murals of Wat Long Khoun (Laos, 18th Century) and the age-old ‘Gold Leaf Stencil” art form (a popular and religious art form seen on Buddhist temple walls through out South Asia).

Visit UPENN’s South Asia Center website here

Logo for Boipara.Com:

Since, we started Boipara.com, our primary goal is to archive alternative and marginalized Bengali Literature, books, magazines and other published/unpublished material, digitally, on Internet. Boipara.com is a totally non-commercial, non-profit and co-operative initiative that is voluntarily run by a closed group of Bengali Literature enthusiasts, who has a keen interest on alternative and marginal literary forms of Bengali language and literature. When we needed a logo for this initiative, I happily agreed to volunteer. While designing the logo, my first challenge was to express the idea of the co-operative initiative and establish the concept of a ‘group’ behind this whole initiative. I decided to go for a ‘figurative’ logo, a logo with multiple human figures connected to each other visually forming a group, that would represent the closed group of people behind this entire initiative. The next challenge was to express the semi-urban socio-cultural features of this specific group, working within a particular demographical arena. I combined modern stick figures with traditional figurines as seen in tribal paintings in rural Eastern India and added a strong hint towards the informal approach of this group by simulating hand-drawn lines. Once I had the form ready, I tried to illustrate various activities with this figures that could be associated with alternative literature movements in Bengali language and literature and soon came up with a series of hand-drawn tribal stick figures, standing, walking, painting, reading, writing, carrying side bags on their shoulders and so on. I selected four of them to form the graphical part of the logo, based on the activities they are representing, as well as their interrelated visual rhythm. Once the graphical symbol is ready, it was easy to add the textual part. I used a thick marker to draw all required letters, separately, and later combined them to form the name “Boipara Dot Com”, written in Bengali script. Everyone liked the outcome, including me!

Visit Boipara.com here