Colour Palette

Posted on April 20, 2016 by Jess Claxton

I wanted colours that reflected the nautical theme of the tattoo studio. I looked into nautical colour schemes to see which ones I could possibly use in my own colour palettes. Obviously, lots of the colour schemes contains varying shades of blues. Many also include reds and whites.

I think I want my colour palette is contain just shades of blue as I don’t want too many colours involved. Additionally, I think that having varying shades of blue as my colour palette will go well for my ideas for my logo.

These are my colours for my colour palette. I think that they work well together. I also think that the dark blue could also act as a black and the lightest blue could act as a white which will work in all situations.

I will use this colour palette throughout all my designs, the logo, the website and the business card.

Shoreditch Tattoo Studios

Posted on April 20, 2016 by Jess Claxton

I wanted to look in tattoo studios in Shoreditch to see how they branded themselves. I found about 7 tattoo studios that are situated in Shoreditch and looked at how their websites looked and any logos they had and to see if I could get any inspiration for my own designs.

Good Times Tattoo

I liked the style of this website as it is fairly plain and simple, and I believe fits well with a Shoreditch, hipster feel. Although it is very simple, I like that it is still very obvious what it is for.

Cloak and Dagger Tattoo

I am not a fan of this studios title/logo but I do like how the website is laid out, with the large image in the centre, with the options across the top.

Fifth Dimension

I do not like the logo for this tattoo studio, or particularly how the website is laid out. I do like the idea of having a photograph with some text next to it explaining a bit about the studio, and I think that this may be something I use in my own.

Prick Tattoo Parlour

I really liked the design of this website, especially the faded image at the top with the logo overlaid.

Seven Doors Tattoo

I think that this website is fairly boring, although I do quite like the logo. It is quite simple but I definitely prefer the Good Times Tattoo simple layout.

Shall Adore Tattoo

I liked this welcome page to the website as it is very simple and introduces the viewer to the company. I also like the band across the top that has all the headers on and think that this will be something that I will use in my own designs.

Nine Tails Tattoo

Although I don’t like this website design, I like that it links to the style of the tattooing that they do. I’d like to design a website that reflects the style that High Seas Ink use in their tattooing.

I’d hope to use some of these features in my own website design.

Colouring the octopus

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Jess Claxton

After I had transferred my sketch of my logo to Illustrator, I had to choose a colour scheme as well as how I wanted to colour it, for example just the lines or fill the whole thing.

I started by using my rough colours that I had chosen for my colour palette, but not finalised yet, to use as the lines.

I thought that this looked alright but I wasn’t entirely happy with it as I felt that it looked a little boring. The first colour I had chosen looked too dark on the lines, and almost looked black and the final colour I felt was a bit too light. I also had another colour after that one but that was far too light.

I wanted a watercolour background, similar to that of the watercolour tattoo I had previously seen but in my colour palette. I found this really difficult to do in Photoshop, despite downloading watercolour brushes. I wasn’t happy with how any of the colour was going onto the page or how it looked. I also tried finding a watercolour background that I could put straight onto it although I was still not happy with how this turned out.

I had put a font at the bottom although I hadn’t picked a final font yet. I liked that the octopus was filled in as I felt that it stood out more but I wasn’t sure what I could do with it.

I asked for some feedback from my housemates and one suggested filling in each section of the octopus with a different colour from my colour palette.

(again, I hadn’t chosen a font yet or a position)

I liked this a lot more and I felt that it stood out quite well. The only issue that I had was that I wasn’t entirely convinced that it could be used as a logo for a tattoo studio.

Another suggestion from my housemate was to change the colour of the lines to white so that the octopus was just made up of the coloured panels.

I like this as well, although I feel that it looks a lot lighter.

Octopus Idea

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Jess Claxton

After disliking the other ideas that I had made I became stuck for ideas. I began searching tattoo logos on different sites such as Tumblr and Pinterest to get a few ideas. I came across a graphic design company called ‘Zef Studio‘ who had produced a nautical themed logo on their Tumblr page.

I thought that designing something similar would be interesting for my own tattoo logo as I liked the circular shape and the way that it had the words inside a border. I also liked the simplicity of the illustration inside.

Again, I became stuck for ideas as I felt that I was copying the design above when I tried to come up with my own and it wasn’t original enough. Although I did still like the idea of having a fairly simplistic logo (which goes against what I originally decided, as I wanted a logo that could be traditional tattoo). The logo for the actual design company caught my attention as I liked how minimalistic it was but also had a sort of ‘hipster’ vibe. I had previously had an idea to create a logo made up of triangles as I wanted it to fit into the hipster vibe of Shoreditch. At the moment, triangles are often seen as being fairly hipstery and so I wanted to try and use this within my logo designs.

I had also previously seen a watercolour tattoo of two birds that appeared to look as though they were origami and so were tattooed on in triangles. I really liked this idea and thought that it would work well for my logo.

I thought that it might be interesting to use a sea creature of some kind for my logo rather than an object to represent my nautical theme. I originally looked at using a sea turtle, although I felt that it wouldn’t look good for a tattoo studio as it is not something often associated with tattooing and/or nautical themes. Instead I chose to use an octopus. I found an image of an octopus outline online and sketched it out.

I then overlaid this with another piece of paper and covered the whole shape in triangles. The edges were not perfect as in the original they were rounded, which could not happen with triangle, but I liked the structured look of it. Below is my sketch.

This is my rough sketch of how I wanted my logo to look.

Other Ideas

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Jess Claxton

After I had created my first initial design I decided to play around with the type positioning as I wasn’t happy with the banner on top of the ships wheel. I placed the font around the outside of the ships wheel as well as over the top as can be seen below

I wasn’t particularly happy with either of these designs. I felt that in the first one, the type got confused with the handles of the wheel and the middle part was exposed which I wasn’t too happy with to start with. I also think that the type gets lost in the second too and as it a bit bare.

I then went onto to think about other nautical symbols that I could use for my logo. When looking at nautical themed tattoos, there were quite a few with boats and ships and so I thought that this would be something that I could use in my logo design. I found a few tattoos of boats that I thought would work well within the context of a logo for a tattoo studio. I made a rough sketch of what I wanted the logo to look like, incorporating other elements that I thought would look good, for example the rope around the edge.

I had previously found a font that I felt was representative of tattoos and so wanted to use it as part of my logo. Below is a photograph of my version of the font as I was never able to download it due to a corrupt file.

I began to make the ship in Illustrator.

This is as far as I got with this idea before I decided that I didn’t like it very much. I found it difficult to draw the waves into the background and bend them so they looked good.