My conceptual logo for this assignment is for a “book review/award” website, that promotes and reviews books which explore dark and abject concepts, from social politics, to feminism, mental health, and the environment.
The concept behind the logo was born from the word “Ventricle”, which are components of the heart which pump blood around the body; I wanted it to be a metaphor for the way in which art plays out in society, and its relationship to us.
We work to earn a living and to keep occupied, but when we get home, we unwind with art, tv shows, films, comics, books, paintings, music. Art is something that makes us human, and we are the only species on Earth which partake in ‘the bardic function’ through media.
“ Fiske and Hartley (2005) argued television “functions as a social ritual” because we all gather around the screen to reinforce our beliefs and practices. They compared this custom to the way medieval audiences gathered around the talented bards to hear their stories and songs about heroic deeds, courtly romances, and mythological tales.
That is why they coined the term “bardic function” to describe television’s role in the transmission of language and culture.” (Fiske, J. & Hartley, J. (2003 [1978]))
I liken this ability to tell stories from the past and create stories of the future, as our lifeblood;
If we only went to work, and came home to do more work, we would be extremely unhappy, and our mental health would suffer greatly. So from this I created this conceptual logo which represents the relativity of work with art and literature as “yin yang”.
The logo has a black and white shaded contrast with the ying yang shape incorporated into the shape of a human heart to convey these ideas. As i am creating a blog which reviews books of an abject nature, i also wanted to use this heart to show that the exploration of transgressions in art is fundamental to the development of the human race; to the development of socio-politics, feminism, animal treatment, mental health and the human condition, the environment, and anything else which might be considered taboo and regarded as “non normative’ discussion topics.
In this way, art can be seen as something that keeps us going, and keeps us alive, as well as vital in exploring our nature and condition as people, as the heart is an organ which keeps us alive. Therefore I designed a logo which incorporates the heart, and yin and yang, as a homage and metaphor to our dependency on art for our intellectual development.
The design process of my logo was to hand draw a simplified version of a human heart, and to clean up the lines. I then took a photograph and pasted it into Adobe Illustrator; then I used trace image 3 colours, and recoloured the heart, before drawing the typography and repeating the same steps, or trace image, and using create outlines, to make a vector logo. I did decide to keep some of the natural shadow gradients that went through with tracing the image, as I felt it gave the logo some texture, and a dark grungy kind of style which is what I wanted for my website as it pertains to horror and abjection.
Sketches and Notes
Harvard References
| Fiske, J. & Hartley, J. (2003 [1978]): “Reading Television”. [Blog Post] ]Media Studies. Available Online:https://media-studies.com/bardic-function/ [Accessed 11/12/2023] |