The Third Lecture: Condensing and Creating Logos

Wednesday in our introduction class we displayed our refined, bolder, and simplified illustrations of our stories. Several people had reduced their stories down to one image, but others were still having difficulty grasping the concept and were still trying to use multiple images to tell their personal events. It can be a challenging task, but everyone has their own unique method to figure out artistically the way they wanted to convey their messages.
Professor Babcock seemed pleased with the efforts of the class, and used examples of what some of the students had drawn to discuss the next project. Handing out a series of articles and images from books, the professor began to explain how illustrators and designers are often expected to take several concepts from a client and turn them into simplified, singular logos. A customer who is describing their company or product in multiple ideas and terms expects many of these artists to take all this information and turn it into a unifying symbol that represents a normally positive aspect of that company or product.

As reemphasized from a book called "A Smile in the Mind", artist often combine two or more images that are already recognizable symbols in a way that lets both retain their history but ads a new association/message to both as well that would not have been possible when separated. A mint leaf in the shape of lips; a road in the form of an "A"; a fish shaped like a hand, and several more examples or abstract combinations. For the rest of class, the professor instructed us to write down as many word and ideas that we commonly think about and associate with; followed by us trying to draw each of these images to present next class. It is an exciting assignment to venture into.