What is Crossings?
Throughout my time at Design and Agency, I have gotten the chance to work on various projects and learn from real life client work. The most recent and interesting of these has been Crossings. This project began as a collaboration between different organizations in the United States and Norway in an effort to organize and commemorate the arrival of Norwegian Immigrants in the US in 1825. A bicentennial! Norwegian-American Bicentennial is what was used in 1925, 100 years ago, so in an effort to be more original than the originals, we came up with a new name. This process took an entire semester, and we did a lot of research into words, and where words come from. Our team explored different combinations of words both in English and Norwegian to help capture the essence of the project, while leaving it ambiguous enough to cover a variety of topics. Along with this linguistic research, we also began collecting visual imagery at this time as well. After a warm and refreshing summer break, our team carried this project forward, beginning to develop a visual identity for the Crossings brand.
Initially, we ran into a couple of issues as a team. Part of my process as a designer is to come up with a logo first, and then strip it for parts and find some smaller bits that I can turn into different brand elements. Usually, this turns out in my favor. In this case, however, Crossings is so broad that creating one mark for the entire brand turned out to be a difficult task to handle without any context. So I made some posters. These posters were small little art pieces that came together to show the idea of all of the ways that we as humans ‘cross’. Abstract images of clouds, a top down image of a boat wake, and then a good ol’ fashioned American freeway. While not every poster struck a chord with the client, the boat seemed to catch their attention. Taking that idea forward, I found it much easier to construct a single mark to present to the client.
Throughout my time at Design and Agency, I have gotten the chance to work on various projects and learn from real life client work. The most recent and interesting of these has been Crossings. This project began as a collaboration between different organizations in the United States and Norway in an effort to organize and commemorate the arrival of Norwegian Immigrants in the US in 1825. A bicentennial! Norwegian-American Bicentennial is what was used in 1925, 100 years ago, so in an effort to be more original than the originals, we came up with a new name. This process took an entire semester, and we did a lot of research into words, and where words come from. Our team explored different combinations of words both in English and Norwegian to help capture the essence of the project, while leaving it ambiguous enough to cover a variety of topics. Along with this linguistic research, we also began collecting visual imagery at this time as well. After a warm and refreshing summer break, our team carried this project forward, beginning to develop a visual identity for the Crossings brand.
Initially, we ran into a couple of issues as a team. Part of my process as a designer is to come up with a logo first, and then strip it for parts and find some smaller bits that I can turn into different brand elements. Usually, this turns out in my favor. In this case, however, Crossings is so broad that creating one mark for the entire brand turned out to be a difficult task to handle without any context. So I made some posters. These posters were small little art pieces that came together to show the idea of all of the ways that we as humans ‘cross’. Abstract images of clouds, a top down image of a boat wake, and then a good ol’ fashioned American freeway. While not every poster struck a chord with the client, the boat seemed to catch their attention. Taking that idea forward, I found it much easier to construct a single mark to present to the client.
The iterations of this idea can be seen much below, as well as the posters that I mentioned. After presenting those posters to the client, and working out some kinks (as seen with all those iterations down there), I came to the mark you see directly above for the crossings brand. Simultaneously a C and a boat making wakes in the ocean, I thought that this would provide enough wiggle room to break it down and start building a bigger brand around the idea of travel. As a bonus, the boat is also pointing west, which is the same direction that the Norwegians on the ship ‘Restauration’ traveled to get to the United States. Little geography/history lesson there for ya. Working with this project has been a joy, and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes. It was wonderful to be connected with a historically rich and interesting society, and to pull my own little logo out of that research that I could present back to them was a gift.
Logo and Branding
Sketches, process, and posters
