I realize that, with its current, small audience, giving Heterochromia a logo, a "brand," probably isn't of the utmost importance. However, since the intention of doing Heterochromia is to give me a chance to practice doing a comic, I may as well practice the peripherals: branding, web design (which is still pretty weak...), pre-press, design, etc.. These aspects are of interest to me as different design tasks. Designing a logo for Heterochromia has been a particular desire since I took an art class in the spring, during which I created a hand-drawn logotype (among other things) for the state of Indiana (check out my work on my flickr, if you're interested)
There are lots of problems with "Heterochromia" as a title, and I realize it. In truth, it was meant to be a working title. I could probably still change it, and sometimes wish to do so, but the only other pleasing name I've dreamed up lacks the depth of meaning of Heterochromia. It probably would have been changed, had I not wanted to tell people about it before I had come up with a "real" title. Circumstances not being thus, Heterochromia stuck, despite its length (13 letters?! 6 syllables?!), its level of obscurity ("Heterochromia? W-what's that?") and its inability to be satisfyingly shortened via abbreviation or acronym ("hetero"? "hetmia"? "Hchromia"? "hc"? "hcr"? "htc"? Or my recent preference: "hc h"? *).
When I was recently in San Francisco, my companion and I passed Kongregate's office, outside of which is a vertical sign displaying their logotype. My companion remarked on it, simply because it was a familiar company. He also said this about them (possibly not in these precise words) : "The name's length is distinctive, so they use that as their logo." I didn't say anything at the time, but it got me guiltily (re)thinking about Heterochromia's logo and length. At that time, I'd already sketched a few logos; it was the next day, after one of his co-workers linked me to some nice design websites and I discovered reddit's typography, web_design, and design subreddits that I found some of my greatest sources of inspiration as to what I'd like the Heterochromia logo to look like. Here are some of my favorite finds from those following days:
Logo Design Love has of course been a large inspiration contributor, with the process articles "The unsung heroes" and "Henri Ehrhart brand identity design" (written by the LDL author, so it counts), as well as their logo collection articles "Negative space in logo design" and particularly "15 inspiring ambigram logos."
Of these, I absolutely love the Truce Vodka logo:
Not only is the Truce logo enticing at a glance, but I love the thought behind it: that, on the slightly-metallic background, the lighting will change whether the light or dark side of the logo is seen. The metallic part probably isn't important as far as the Heterochromia logo goes, but still an awesome feature--and anyway, a multicolor logo would make sense.
Of course, I haven't limited myself to looking at logos. Packaging, business card, and web design have all been influences. I just rediscovered an article I'd looked at and love a while ago, featuring the best honey jar design I've every seen:
And, although I couldn't choose a favorite, I've also been enjoying Rickwork's "100 most creative business cards" post, as well as myriad articles found through Design Meltdown.
Most recently, I ran across Reversible, an anthology published by Digital Manga:
This one picks up on the ambigram feel I mentioned earlier, though it is not a true ambigram.
Besides finding the ambigram look used for a comic, I also took a look at other sci-fi manga logos:
Aria and Aqua are some of my favorite manga series. Although I don't always like Tokyopop as a company, I do love what they did with the logos after acquiring the titles. ADV's were a little too... classic or retro, I think.
Of course, even all that I've shown here cannot possibly represent all that I've examined to find inspiration; these are merely the sources which I wish to share and revisit. More may be added later--by no means do I ever consider myself "done" with research.
So, keywords to pull out of all this? Ambigram, letterform manipulation, geometric (ish), multicolored, and minimal would probably sum it up. Of course, Heterochromia itself has some keywords to contribute, I'm sure some more expected than others.
* Yes, these question marks are correctly placed. Only in dialogue do question marks need to be placed inside quotation marks.
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