OUGD503 Individual Practice, Eurojust - Mock Up Designs (Studio Brief One)

I decided to move onto Illustrator and start making some black and white mock ups of some logo designs. Most of these don't include the European flag, as I figured if the actual concept of the design was there, I would then further develop the logo to fit the requirements. This logo idea was a development from one of my rough sketches. It simply has changed the E in Eurojust to the Euro currency symbol. I think this is actually really successful as it's simple and legible. I used the typeface Futura for all of my logo designs - this was because, after some research, it is a typeface that can be used by companies as long as the type can not be changed - meaning that I would have to expand all of the type in Illustrator and then it is free to be used anywhere. 

I then experimented with the magnifying glass idea. I think that this particular design was too much with the lines in, and therefore decided to get rid of the glass-look inside the 'O' which can be seen below.

I think this was more successful than the previous design as all of the strokes are the same thickness and therefore it would make it easier to rescale the logo design without losing quality and detail. The only problem I had with this particular design was the fact that the 'O' looked a little bit like the letter 'Q'.

I changed the direction of the stroke of the magnifying glass and this is what it looked like. This is definitely the most successful out of the three designs as the O no longer looks like the letterform Q and it's also a very minimal logo design - something that I think Eurojust should work with for their logo design, as their current design is very complex and all over the place.

I then decided to experiment further with the handcuff idea. This was to symbolise the idea of fighting for justice. The design below wasn't too successful as the design for the handcuffs didn't really look like handcuffs like I had imagined. 

This is an experiment with the letterform O. I tried to make this look like handcuffs, but as expected it looks more like the letter G than it does handcuffs.

I then went for another obvious response to the competition. I turn the O into a fingerprint - also symbolising the fight for justice. I think the design is quite successful, however it couldn't be rescaled by much as it would lose too much detail, and therefore that makes it unsucessful.

I tried to experiment with this idea further, by getting rid of some of the detail of the finger print. This is unsuccessful as it no longer looks like a fingerprint, and I'd say it more looks like a target. 

Finally, I decided to go back to the idea of just using type. I think this logo design isn't great as it is spread out too much and it isn't too obvious that the use of the stars from the European flag is the letterform 'O'. 

In this design, I tried to make this factor more obvious. I think this design is the most successful, as it's very minimal and slick, but it also meets the requirements of the competition brief.