Development bits and bobs for Tom Howes -

The first thing to work on after deciding on the basic layout Tom wanted for his wesbite was to decide what typeface to use. Lucikly for me there is minimal type on his website because the content is mainly image based. We decided to use a running banner type thing across the whole site which acts more like a logo than anything else, all it had to say was 'Thomas Howes Illustration'. The rest of the dialogue on the site neeed to be a web safe typeface, we deided to go with courier because it's simple, classic and not too contempoary, something Tom wanted his whole site to echo.

Anyway, the main 'logo/banner' feature had to be something masculine, assertive but classy all rolled into one. I found a typeface called roadway which fitted this role perfectly. We talked about using roadway and another typeface but none of them seemed to fit quite right. Adelle Basic was the only real competitor but Tom wasn't keen on it so I ended up using Roadway but altering the kerning and size so it fitted with the larger type but didn't look too out of place.

 I had mocked up some potential business cards for Tom just before I started the work on his website. Tom had told me he wanted his identity and branding to be siple typography but without looking too naff and boring. I toyed with the idea of going against his wishes and mocking up some cards which included his illustrations then decided against it for the following reasons;

1) I suppose it's like walking around with a little portfolio in your pocket, and most people want to rip everything out of their portfolio and start again every few months. To make a new business card every few months would be financially stupid. The design would need to stand the test of time.

2) He has such an enormous cagtalogue of work and although they all follow the same style - finding an image to put on this business card that sort of summed up his entire practice would be too difficult.

I quite liked my first mock ups, I think tom did too. We both knew they wern't quite right - they look a bit too delicate and feminine. Back to the drawing board - 

I decided on using the same typeface for the cards as I did for the website - I think this gives his branding a bit more continuity and a good flow. I decided to cut out a load of decorative bits, the additional typefaces and anything else and keep it clean, bold and simple with plenty of 'doodle space'. I presented Tom with a range of possible colours, we felt as the front of the card is so simple and black and white it would be a good contrast to have the back in a really deep but bold colour. The two that fitted well were the red and dark purple but neither of us are mad on red so we went with the purple. 

In the crit someone questioned why I had written Tom's email address with an '(at)' rather than a '@'. Although seeral other people said they quite liked this small feature. Honestly, it was put there because ther was no @ symbol in Roadway, but I intened to find a similar typeface to accomodate the @ symbol at a later date. I think I will stick with the (at). Tom likes it and so do I. We talked about having all the olours printed so most people who took one would have a different colour - I really like this idea but imagine it would be expensive. In the future I might look at doing a different colour every year or six months etc. 

I printed a few off in the mac room for my crit - I was a bit worried because the printer ink didn't stick to the paper properly  which made them look a bit worn and tatty. In the crit everyone said they liked that quality and said it made them look screen printed! Yesss.

Please exuse the rubbish photos! I'm doing the photography workshop on Thursday so hopefully will get some good ones then...

Also ignore any missing 'c' letters my keyboard is going mad....