Michael Dowell

To celebrate the launch of my all new, shiny site I asked my close friend and very talented stitched illustrator Peter Crawley to produce my ident the way he knows best – with a needle and thread (in my case teal coloured) and it’s safe to say I couldn’t be happier with the uber rad outcome!

Peter is having a great run of success of late; his work has been featured twice in Creative Review and has been posted on over a dozen highly respected sites including Creative Review, It’s Nice That, ParrisWakefield, MatDolphin and Form Fifty Five.

 

So what ingredients make for a memorable ident

Here are a few pointers I tried to keep in mind whilst designing mine.

What is an ident?
An ident isn’t necessarily a logo… When I think ident I think social networks twitter and Facebook. Something that you want your peers to relate to you, this can take many forms from an adapted logo, an intriguing photo to a favoured illustration or current piece of work.

Show a little bit of you
It’s always worth getting the obvious out of the way so here it is; your ident should be a little bit of who you are in a visual form. If you’re @stevenbonner (a talented illustrator and typographer) then your ident should reflect that, if you’re @stevenTaylor (highly respected photographer from LA) then your ident should indeed reflect this!

An ident to remember
Give your audience something they will remember. Aim for an angle that either has the world asking ‘What the hell is it!’ or ‘Damn I wish i’d done that!’

Keep its essence
Don’t be scare to adapt/evolve but do not just do it for the sake of it.

Sketch your heart out…then some!
I’m still a strong believer that it is counter productive to jump straight onto a computer. Sketching and doodling allows you to visualize your ideas roughly and quickly and allows you to evolve and move on. I’m also a strong believer of the over used  ‘you can’t have a great idea without lots of ideas’. On the rare occasion when the first idea is the right route, exploring others can give you reassurance in your outcome. If I’m happy with an idea I tend to leave it for a few hours and come back to it. If I still like it then I know I’m onto something.

Most importantly…
Never be happy with your first idea… but feel free to go back to it

Other more design based tips – Produce something that scales well, choose a colour palette that gets you recognised, pay attention to the details and have faith in your talent.

I have the luxury of having a lot of fantastically talented and creative friends. Not only are they great at they’re 9-5′s but their talents excel into their personal projects. I have started collating a few of them on my links page.

Posted on July 6, 2011