SERENDIPITY

Sometimes you just know you're doing the right thing. As some of you may recall from an earlier post, I was working on a logo for a friend. I was initially hesitant to proceed with the work as my super-cautious nature warned me of possible complications down the road (it wasn't clear whether or not I was the only one working on the logo, nor whether or not I was going to get paid).

After consulting my friend, I was assured that I was the only one working on the logo. I decided to proceed with the second phase of the design, in which I was to implement changes based on input from my friend's friend (the actual client). One of the changes was to somehow insert computer logic board iconography into the existing logo design. This boiled down to one solution, which was to place the iconography in the background of the logo, at a light enough tint of the color so it wouldn't compete with the foreground.

The day I decided to begin working on the new design, I received a brochure in the mail from my alma mater, the University of Oregon. The subject of the brochure was a speech to be given by a professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The topic of the speech was named Cyberintimacies, and was about humankind's relationship with computers. The graphic used to illustrate this concept was that of two silhouettes of human heads, facing each other, with logic board iconography inside the heads of the silhouettes. It was exactly the kind of iconography I'd imagined for my logo project, and I placed the brochure on my desk and used it for reference while I hand-drew similar iconography in Adobe Illustrator.

The only drawback to creating this logo was that the client lives in Berkeley, and wanted the colors to match that of the Cal Bears, a team I dislike with a passion. But, since it was a paying gig, I even went the extra mile and researched online what the Pantone spot colors were for Cal, and gave the client two versions of the logo, one a four-color build, and one a two-color build using the Pantone colors.