Kim Stuart branding: logo design

Looking at the brief Kim sent as well as the mini interview I had with her, I have pulled some keywords out to explore logo ideas.

- mixed media
- collage
- layering
- stitching
- texture
- beauty
- editorial
- professional 
- colour 
- clean

initial thumbnails

I focused on mainly layering texture and type experiments in my initial thoughts.
Layering is an interesting concept to try and bring into logo design and I thought I could experiment with many shapes and combinations. In my sketches I deconstructed a camera using the basic shapes - also went down the beauty route and represented a woman posing and looking in a mirror using these basic shapes and layering technique. However, I didn't like the combination of ideas.

The texture was fun to look at, I scribbled down some textures including hatching, which looked slightly scruffy (would have to neaten digitally) and some patterns of stitching including herringbone pattern and chevrons. I think I could take this down a minimal route but would look really effective when brought together with type. 

In my type experiments I looked at making Kim's name more scripted, however, I think if the icon will be more of the focus and contain a few elements, the style may need to be more simplistic, using sans serif type.

One major element of Kim's work is that she likes to include texture, whether that be through mixed media including collage and stitching or through layering. I chose to focus on the stitching as this was definitely something Kim wanted to incorporate into her branding and promotional material.

Texture
To get me started I began to collect visual research on texture, including fabrics and stitches to draw inspiration from. Once I began looking around I realised how many textures there were readily available to me in clothing, furnishings etc.

After looking further into these textures including the weave of the fabrics shown here, I began to see that pattern was also a big element in fabric and texture. Weave and stitching will also be an interesting route to explore visually.

Warp and Weft

Here I did a little study on the weave of fabrics, representing the warp and weft of the fabric using short marks. I think if the marks were neater I could minimalize them, create a pattern similar to this and make an interesting logo.