Designing the New iJustine Logo

Tagged Deisgn by Brent on August 15th, 2008

After many, many revisions and way too many months of delay. It is my pleasure to unveil a brand new logo for my friend Justine. This was a very difficult task, not just because it was for Justine, but more for the fact that I have such a major peeve with the “i” in front. A lower case “i” besides a capital “J” leaves such a crappy opening in the word that I fought through literally hundreds of typefaces to find one that could have an option for me to start with. I finally found Buffet Script and found a slight glimmer of hope.

This typeface had a lot of character and some really nice alternates so I decided to commit to it and start using it as a base for her logo. After playing for a bit I was left with an unsettling feeling when I saw the ‘i’ slamming into the ‘J’ and fighting with the ‘t’. I was also not to pleased with the default ‘e’ and there was definitely some work that the letters needed to make them play nice together.

I started looking at some of the alternates and found some good options. Especially with the ‘n’ and it’s nifty little underlining loop. After finding a more normal ‘e’, tweaking the dot on the second ‘i’ and the ‘t’, I was feeling pretty good, but that dang ‘iJ’ combo was just killing me! A lowercase ‘i’ next to an uppercase ‘J’ is just weird looking to me for some reason. I had to bang this one into some form of submission and ended up chopping off the ‘i’ and fudging it around a bit. Not the perfect solution, but it kinda worked.

After completing the “iJustine” design, we bounced the thing around for a few days. I decided on thickening some of the thinner strokes, adjusting the loop on the ‘n’ and playing with some of the tracking. Suddenly, we had a brainstorm… Kill the ‘i’ all together and just use the loop on the ‘J’ so it reads “Justine” but still has the ‘i’ in front so as to not offend… whoever. (I mean, who really needs the ‘i’ anyway?)

So there you go! We actually ended up with two different designs (for now). One that clearly says “iJustine” and one that is a little less ‘i’. We’re using the ‘iJustine’ design for the new (brand yourself) Viddler shirts (pictured) and the above design for just about everything else. Can I say this is actually the final, final, final design? Heck no! I’m way too much of a design freak to leave it be for too long, but hopefully this one will last for a little while before we both start picking at it again.

All in all, I really am very happy with the final outcome and I hope she feels the same. We’ll see what happens.

So… You know what I think. What do you think?