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.

Shoreditch

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Jess Claxton

The tattoo studio is based in the Shoreditch area of London.

Map of Shoreditch within London

Shoreditch is an inner city district within the East End of London and Central London, within the London Borough of Hackney.

“A triangle of influences have made Shoreditch into one of London’s most distinctive and unusual areas. To the East, Bangla-town and Brick Lane – London’s celebrated curry mile – are a riot of smells and colours from the Indian sub-continent. In the West, the looming towers of Liverpool Street and the City represent the world’s most concentrated area of money-making talent, where a number of sophisticated business hotels have sprung up. And right in the middle of it all is Spitalfields market, a citadel of the working classes and home of the cockney music hall tradition. The result is an area where trendy bars sit next to cut-price Bangladeshi restaurants, where artists and fashionistas from Hackney and Shoreditch make their own clothes with fabrics from sari shops, and traditional cockney butchers share space with exclusive delicatessens.”

– – LondonTown.com

Since the mid 90s, Shoreditch has become a popular and fashionable part of London, often combined with the neighbouring area of Hoxton, there has been considerable gentrification in the area with the rise of property and land prices. The area has become popular with London-based web technology companies, for example last.fm, Dopplr, Songkick, SocialGO and 7digital. Since the gentrification of the area, many creative industry companies have moved in, transforming old industrial buildings into offices and flats.

Shoreditch has since become synonymous with the term ‘hipster’, with trendy bars and cafes as well as vintage shops and clothing.

With this information I will look at creating a logo for the tattoo studio that has a ‘hipster’ feel to it that would be obvious that it had its roots in Shoreditch.

Tattoo Studio Logos

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Jess Claxton

I have also looked at already established tattoo studio logos to get some inspiration for my own logo designs. Below is a collection of tattoo parlour logos:

I also found an article that I found helpful that talked about the creating of a logo of a tattoo studio called Madhouse Tattoo, including the brief given to him by the owner as well as the technical aspects of actually designing the logo.