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process book shay merritté

Green Center Process Book

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The process book I designed from an identity project that I was working on and repurposed as an entrance essay for the Fisher College of Business

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Page 1: Green Center Process Book

process bookshay merritté

Page 2: Green Center Process Book

process bookshay merritté

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Page 3: Green Center Process Book

contents

title page 1

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3

4

5

6 | 7

8 | 9

10 | 11

12 | 13

14 | 15

16 | 17

18 | 19

20 | 21

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24 | 25

colophoncontents

introductionessay prompt

curiosity essayearly research

type explorationearly logoslater logos

color explorationlogo refinement

message explorationfield exploration

print collateral

2 3

This book was designed and bound by Shay Merritté during the Winter of 2008 in St.Louis, Missouri, using the typeface Scala Sans. It was ink and laser printed on 60 lb text Mohawk Superfine and Strathmore Artist Papers 400 series.

AmericanishShay Merritté(314)[email protected]

edition .................... of ....................

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essay promptintroduction

One of Fisher’s strengths is its dedication to developing leaders. Listed below are 10 attributes that characterize great leaders. Please select the two criteria that best describe your strengths and provide us with concrete evidence to support your choices. You may submit physical objects, images, photographs or photocopies, along with brief descriptions of how the objects exemplify the leadership qualities you have chosen (i.e. you might share a picture of time spent doing volunteer work in another country, along with an explanation for how that experience has heightened your global awareness). Or, you may choose to write an essay for each of the two characteristics you select, describing situations in which you exemplified these leadership traits. Please title each of your essays with the specific attribute (e.g. “endurance”) that you have chosen.

• Integrity• Empathy• Curiosity• Endurance• Creativity• Global awareness• Passion• Vision• Self-awareness• Communication & Interpersonal skills

This book is a supplement to one of my answer for Ohio State’s Fisher School of Business MBA application’s second question: Focusing on Leadership: Curiosity. Because I work in such a visual and process driven profession, I thought it appropriate to show both my working process, and see a small portion of the work described in the essay.

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curiosity

There are at least 50 recyclable items that come in green transparent glass or plastic packaging at my local grocery

store, ranging from beer bottles to bandage packaging. I discovered this fact after working on a branding effort for a local environmental arts and education non-profit named The Green Center. After designing their logo and defining identity elements, I was curious to see if I could create something to give their print material a unique voice.

One afternoon I was unwrapping a valentine’s themed cupcake that had been distributed throughout my studio. The red cellophane that was protecting the cupcake fell on the cover of a magazine on my desk. When I looked down I saw that the cellophane had neutralized the red areas on the cover while making the blue areas appear black and pop against the neutralized red areas. I wondered if this could be the solution I was looking for to make The Green Center’s brand unique. The solution I created was that The Green Center could hide messages in their printed material that could then be revealed by holding transparent green recyclable items over the material. I thought this idea would reference the color green, an element of The Green Center’s brand, promote recycling and reinforce the idea of the hidden beauty of nature.

I looked around my studio and found 3 soda bottles of different shades, and realized I needed to experiment to find a solution that would work with a range of green items. I immediately

went to the local grocery store to get my hands on everything transparent and green that I could find, then headed home to figure out how to replicate the phenomena I had experienced earlier with the red cellophane and magazine cover.

After consulting color theory books, I discovered that the hidden messages would be printed in orange and obscured by a green pattern. Now, I had to find the combination of green and orange that would work in conjunction with a variety of transparent green items. After consulting my Pantone color guide, which lists the universal color codes. I calculated that there were more than 100,000 different green and orange color combinations.

After several failed weeks of trying to find the color combination through trial and error, I decided to try a scientific approach. First I found the most commonly used green items and averaged their numeric Pantone number to get a common shade of green. This is the green that would be neutralized by the transparent recyclables and that would be printed over the secret messages. To find the color that the actual secret message would be, I realized that I could use the inverse color value of the green I was using. This more scientific method worked and when I presented the final branding elements to The Green Center, they were surprised and pleased with the unique branding element I had developed for them.

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early research

Early on in any project, much research must be done, the papers on the right represent a small portion of my initial

research. These papers are specifically notes from visiting The Green Center, touring the facilities and speaking with personnel.

Above is the original Green Center logo.

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type exploration

In order to design a visually appealing typographic logo, I needed to find a typeface that would fit the mood and

mission of The Green Center and that would also be legible. The pages on the right are the finalist typefaces I was thinking about using, whittled from several hundred initial options.

Din Black Alternate was chosen as the base typeface for the new Green Center logo because it is a clean, modern sans-serif typeface that is devoid of any wasteful ornamentation.

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early logos

Although, I generated many ideas for logos, one of the most promising ideas that I thought of and I decided to

further explore was inverting the ‘e’s in ‘green’ and altering the counters so they would resemble pine trees. Although it may be difficult to discern the individual ‘e’s in ‘green’ the word can still be read because people have the ability to recognize words by their general shape.

Above is a larger example of an early Green Center logo and a detail showing what the ‘e’s turned into a stylized pine trees looks like.

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later logos

The above logos were two of my favorites that would influence later designs from this series of investigations.

I went through several different logo design directions, but I continued to return to the idea of making something using

the negative space of the letters to include iconographic elements. Around this time in the process I also made the decision to drop the ‘the’ from The Green Center as well as abbreviate ‘center’. Both of these decisions were meant to play with the idea of reduction, using less to achieve the same result, a message that The Green Center promotes.

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color exploration

Above are the two colors that I decided on for the final logos along with their numerical attributes for print and screen representation.

C: 30M: 0Y: 95K: 0

R: 190G: 215B: 59

C: 60M: 5Y: 95K: 0

R: 116G: 183B: 74

Initially I did not want to use green in the logo, because I felt that it would be too obvious of a solution. Furthermore The

Green Center, while although involved with environmental work, is actually named after the Green family, which I wanted to emphasize. However as I investigated other colors I discovered that green would ultimately be the best color choice.

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logo refinement

For the final logo refinement I investigated many different ways to represent an ‘e’ by substituting it with a tree shape.

At right you can see some of the tree shape explorations and color organization explorations.

Above are some of the specific attributes of the final logo.

The letter spacing has been reduced for a smaller footprint, playing with the idea of reducing our environmental footprint.

The elements of the letterform have been altered to be harmonious, playing on the idea of environmental harmony.

The ‘e’s of ‘green’ are created from the negative spacing of other words and shapes, playing with the idea of doing without, an element of the environmental movement.

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field investigation

After designing the stylized tree shape that became one of the negative space ‘e’s in the final logo I investigated

different types of shape fields could be created by repeating the stylized tree shape..

Above are some details of different logo field investigations.

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message investigation

For an additional brand element I wanted to create a system of hidden messages that could be revealed by holding

transparent, recyclable green items over The Green Center’s printed material.

Above are the two colors used to create the hidden messages with their numerical attributes for print and screen representation.

C: 31M: 0Y: 90K: 0

R: 187G: 214B: 72

C: 0M: 23Y: 100K: 0

R: 225G: 197B: 11

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print collateral

I then applied the logo and brand elements I had created to the print collateral for The Green Center, shown here is a

sampling of business cards and letterhead development.

Above are samples of the print collateral, showing the details such as the corners which are die cut and to show the usability of both sides of paper, the use of abbreviations referencing the logo and that the letterhead can fold into an envelope.

Page 15: Green Center Process Book

This is my daily clothing ensemble that has become the centerpiece of my personal brand.

Page 16: Green Center Process Book

AmericanishShay Merritté(314)[email protected]