Back Alley Blog Dealers: Logo Design Assignment

My fictitious company made for the logo assignment is named “Miami Nights: Roller Disco”. The colon is not there for the image but instead there is a horizontal gap between Miami Nights and Roller Disco. I based my company off of the way pop culture interprets the 1980’s, a neon soaked party, retro new wave synth playing and often full of adrenaline fueled violence*. I myself am almost obsessed with this style, stylish cars, synth, the neon greens and pinks. I’d say this accurately represents my tastes.

*Hotline Miami is a great, modern example of this.

I couldn’t stray too much from my reference image as a roller skate is not an animal. Most of my cohorts based their pictographic image around an animal, with a few fine exceptions, of course. I find that if I were to stray far from my object or else it wouldn’t look like a roller skate but more of a shoe. That still didn’t stop me from turning it into a Chuck Taylor Converse style skate. I find those to be a very stylish foot garment. I did however dislike the black lines on the inside and didn’t like any other colour so I went with the bold choice of making the lines white. Doing so pushed a minimalist, and made it look different. As far as I can tell I’m the only student in this class who did this making it unique. I can’t say for sure though as not everyone has posted their designs. In the early thought process Ms. Silverman handed me a book over roller skating design. There were lots with a wing on the end, not unlike the talaria of Greek mythology. I liked this but I felt it was more appropriate for a 50’s roller skate joint. I feel that with the white lines push a minimalist look.

As some 80’s fanatics might tell, my typographic logo is homage to a certain little show full of white sports coats and flamingos (kudos to Pank! Software by the way, I love that flamingo.) It wasn’t all that hard to decide the font style, as bad as it is to say, it was one of my first choices and I had my heart set on it. If you take a look at my roughs, you’ll see one that has the classic Friday the 13^th font. I feel indifferent towards this one for my current company but if I happen to do another one of these I think this would be a great font for a retro VHS rental shop. Also if you’re wondering why it says “Miami Nights VI” it was partly because it was the sixth idea there and I was also just poking fun at horror films and their seemingly endless stream of sequels.

I don’t have to much to say about my combined image. I imagine that if it was on a business card it would have the logo to the left and say the text to the right along with all the stationary stuff below. I didn't really originally design the pictographic and typographic to work with each other, which handicaps it in the end. So I started to find a way to keep the typographic and pictographic together and I went with shapes. With the black background it feels extra neo-noir.

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