sporager: logo development
Here are a few of several different typefaces I tried while also exploring how an image and tagline could interact with the word mark. The descender of the “p” created a space for the tagline, but only if the “G” was uppercase. In the fourth example the wordmark was hand lettered in Procreate and then image traced in Illustrator.
I used an image posted by Timothy Dykes (@timothycdykes) on unsplash.com to draw a mushroom in Adobe Illustrator. The image shows the gills on the underside of the mushroom’s cap, which can be important for mushroom identification.
I printed the drawing. Using a lightbox, I painted this mushroom illustration with water and ink on watercolor paper. I scanned the painting and deleted the background in Photoshop. I repeated this process for the other two illustrations. I could alter the colors in duotone mode.
I refined the Illustrator mushroom drawing. It was important to retain an organic feel, so I rounded the ends of the gill lines. Fewer gills and thicker lines made the illustration more legible at a small size. These are a few of the iterations. The final drawing is on the lower right.
Continuing to explore typefaces for the wordmark, I found “Hiker,” an all-caps typeface, on Creative Market. It is shown here in black. I altered some letters for a more organic feel. The letter “P” is like half of a mushroom slice. The letter “A” is wider to blend with the other letters. I added a dotted texture in Procreate which is reminiscent of spore patterns. I image traced the results in Illustrator.
While developing the wordmark and illustration I continued to iterate their placement in the logo with the tagline. In the final version at the bottom, the tagline has a back-and-forth motion, which is like movements made when scanning for mushrooms.
