At its heart, symbols display concepts – and that’s what we do as a brand studio. People have been trying to communicate the same ideas for 40,000 years. What lessons can you apply to your design practice and the work we do for brands? For instance, the North African Berber tribe symbol for “bird” is built out five simple squares, but through the use of animation, it suddenly looks like it’s in flight. Sometimes, that means bringing something to life through simplicity. It needs to go out every single day whether it’s perfect or not, which forces me to be brave about decision making. Lastly, the pace of the project is a challenge of its own. We tend to think about meaning being fixed, but certain figures like the pentagram have changed meaning roughly every 1000 years – from the morning and evening star in Palestine to the contemporary Wiccan symbol for the elements and spirit. Whether it’s a five-pointed or eight-pointed star, there’s something kind of beautiful about everyone drawing inspiration from the same thing.Īnother thing is how symbols change over time. From far east Chinese symbols all the way to the Celtic, thousands of people throughout history have been looking at this planet and rendering it in different ways. What have you learned from the process thus far?įor one, just how many Venus stars there are. As Design Director Robert Saywitz said, “Projects like these allow you to explore different mediums beyond just the computer and brings inspiration to the forefront rather than waiting for it to arrive.” You can find interesting things online, but it can be hard to tell if the person is just making stuff up without the original source. To me, there’s something about these print collections that are a little more legitimate than wandering for images online. Liungman’s “Dictionary of Symbols” and I. We’ve been using “Shepherd’s Glossary of Graphic Signs and Symbols,” which is an amazing collection of everything from punctuation to railway iconography to maritime navigation symbols. What reference materials are you using in your research? Nine times out of ten, I learn something that I didn’t know before and I think that’s amazing.” It’s a good way to keep the creative mind sharp and fun to just create something daily. That requires learning the history, what it means, and seeding it in your mind as a concrete thing.ĭesigner Keyoni Scott is helping create the animations, and he described the process “almost like doing crosswords or those daily mind games. This project is much more about breathing new life into these ancient shapes and allowing yourself the time to reflect on the core idea in an illustrative way. With the State of Symbols, I was mainly recreating existing symbols. I think my favorite aspect is being able to research each symbol and the creative process of meditating on how to render it in a new way. What excites you most about this project? #100DayProject is a great way to build off that work and the fact that there are so many symbols with thousands of years of history fits the 100-day format nicely. Three or four years ago, I created a site called the State of Symbols, which is a designer-friendly repository for symbols. We threw around a couple of ideas, but something about exploring symbols seemed to capture everyone’s imagination early on. It forces you to think from different perspectives and be thoughtful about your approach to rendering something in a unique way. In the beginning, you tend to go for the most obvious choices, but by day 19, you find yourself really having to flex your creativity. This year, our focus is on how ancient symbols inform contemporary brand design. The idea is that you pick a theme or a project and rev on that 100 times. Every spring, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity. The 100DayProject is a free art project started by Lindsay Thomson that takes place online. We sat down with Senior Designer Jonathan Haggard to discuss symbols, simplicity, and how to be brave in your creative decision-making. This year, the design team at Emotive Brand participated in the #100DayProject.
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