10¥

or, an introduction to my portfolio and brand.

Hi folks! It has been a while since my last posting. I’m afraid that, beyond my own expectations, school has further ramped up since the final project. This is a bit of my own fault since I decided to add two additional classes with larger outside projects. As a result, I am currently involved in producing an online magazine, a branding project and all of my various portfolio-related projects.

While my portfolio is still being developed (Object Oriented Programming makes things such fun), I wanted to show off my business card. Hit the cut for various looks and information!

Front:

There are a few elements I wanted to talk about for the front of the card. First is my name. I chose the font Canterbury Sans for my name. I feel that it represents my handwriting to an extent, since I tend to have tall extenders (eg the “l” height) and tall capital letters paired with a small x-height (the height of the lowercase letters). I also think that the difference in heights helps enhance the personality of the font and makes it stand out strongly.

The next item is the nautilus shell in the upper-left corner of the card. The nautilus is the main representation of my brand and carries multiple interpretations. The first is that of evolution. The Nautilus is a sea creature that has a deep connection to the evolutionary process through its prevalence in fossils. Amusingly enough, the creature itself has not evolved, remaining much the same over millions of years. However, when shown the image of a nautilus shell, the sense of progression and change is inherent. Second is that of a logarithmic spiral which carries a strong tie to mathematics and programming. In addition, the logarithmic spiral is often associated with the golden ratio, even though the golden ratio is only a particular case of the logarithmic spiral. This association draws in the expansive history inherent in the golden ratio and golden spiral, a concept that has been used in everything from design to architecture to books to artwork in the belief that it is the “perfect” ratio holy to nature.

Finally, the small text below my name. I used small caps to help differentiate it from the main display font and included “>>>” to form a second connection to the back of the card (the first being the nautilus shell).

Back:

I mentioned earlier that the nautilus shell speaks on the concept of evolution. Here, I took that one step further to create my own “Evolution of Man” using a tadpole, a lizard, an ape and a human, with the “>” forming the connection between the three and directing the eye toward the natural conclusion. This sense of “The Origin of Species” also drove me to use wood for the background of the card. I wanted to capture the sense of those old books and the sense of a natural process. Thus, it seemed that a wood would be appropriate choice to convey those particular meanings.

Now, you might be wondering, “why evolution?” Well, this ties back to my “What is Design?” statement that is under the About section on this site (You didn’t know it changed? Well, I’m mentioning it now!). I’d highly recommend clicking on the link and giving the full document a read, but the cliff notes are that the world around us constantly changes so design does too and that design needs to look both backwards to its own history and to the future in order to be effective. I wanted to capture that sense and the concept of myself as a designer constantly evolving seemed to make perfect sense in that context.

Thus, my “Evolution of AaronBell” concept grew. Please look forward to seeing the portfolio when it is fully completed! It shall be put onto the second domain referenced in the business cards - AaronB.net (it currently takes you back to 10-yen).

In any case, I hope you like the business cards! I had fun making them and they turned out great even when digitally printed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Branding, Graphics, Marketing, Print Design, Typography, Work Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.