Last Instinct

In my previous post about the new logo I made for Helsingkrona Gille, I mentioned that I also made a little brochure. Well, that little folder is now being posted by plain old physical mail to about 800-900 people. So I thought I should put it up here as well. None of the pictures are actually mine but the logo and the layout is all done by me.

It took a couple of nights to complete, but it got a little more ambitious than what was expected, so everyone was happy with the result, from what I’ve heard at least. =)

(The thumbnails below are cropped)

I’m part of the alumni for Helsingkrona Nation, called Helsingkrona Gille. I was asked to put up a decent website for them and start up some activity on the web. Since I was very active in Helsingkrona when I studied in Lund I naturally took this challenge. The first step was to just change the old Facebook group for a Helsingkrona Gille Fanpage to get something to work with while developing.

Secondly I started to work on a new logotype, to get a central point in the graphic identity to work around. This was stressed by an upcoming folder, which will go out to about 900 persons about now. As you might guess I was asked to do the layout for this folder also. I really wanted to get the new logo into this work, so I spent a few nights working on it.

A friend of mine had an idea to base it on a small pin that members of Helsingkrona wear while representing the nation in different activities. I thought it was a great idea, since I also have a redesign of the Helsingkrona Nation logo in progress. I thought that I then could make them match very well.

The original colors of Helsingkrona are red and blue, which are very hard to match unless you use some tricks. You should avoid putting red and blue in direct contact with each other, since it looks bad. However, if you put black or white between them, they look really good together. This is because it enhances the contrast between the two using a neutral color with maximum contrast to both of the other colors. This technique is used in many well known designs, including Pepsi, NBA and The Union Jack.

The second trick to make it look good is to have different brightness of the two colors. This is not necessary, but it enhances the contrast between the two colors even further. Both of these tricks enhances the contrast, making the colors work together. As with any colors, they have to match, which you can achieve using color picking techniques or just a good eye.

I wanted the logo to have an academic look to enhance the connection to Helsingkrona and Lund University, also giving it a serious look and maintain the distinguished heritage. At the same time I wanted the logo to have a modern look to not send signals of old and boring. As with most logos, it’s supposed to work with any media in any scale.

This is what I came up with and I’m really proud of my result. It works well in different scales and now it will have to prove itself in different medias. I will put up more about the folder and the website as soon as they are published.

Me and some manly friends have an order called Lagom, which when translated from Swedish is short for The Academic Spruce Order of Lund for Men. Lagom is actually a popular special Swedish word roughly meaning not too much and not too little. We have get-togethers every now and then where we often have some activity, like go-cart, followed by sauna and then dinner, some singing and clubbing – we call it Herrmiddag meaning gentlemens dinner.

A couple of years ago in 2007, I decided to make a nice academic-style logo for Lagom. I got totally inspired by the logotype of the Lund University, since we at the time all lived at Helsingkrona Nation, and studied at the Lund University. I’ll guess you’ll see a certain inheritance from the Lund University logotype. Anyway, I think I got a nice result and it certainly gave me some good practice. The logo was made, like the Ex-Libris I made for my grandfather, using Adobe Illustrator.