When I originally conceived of EarthRaft I had a mental vision of our planet Earth being a raft in space which contained a boatload of possibility. In creating a design, and a logo to go along with that I’m starting with the simple ball point penning of the name on a piece of paper. Photographed with the camera on my phone and then emailed to myself all I have done from an editing standpoint is crop out the excess of paper upon which I wrote it.
I have this idea of the E in EarthRaft being a circle which represents the Earth but like the Earth it is not a perfect circle in that perfect circles may not exist ( thus pi ) – or rather the reason the area within a circle cannot be finitely measured and that within it thus contained is because the construct, the circle, is inherently false in some manner. A fun discussion could accompany this idea but for now, back to the logo.
Ok, so we break out of this construct of containment – even though we appear and act as if mostly contained on our planet and it serves as our life raft in space – and see ideas and possibilities which trail off across the vast sea of space in arcs like that which the remaining letters of EarthRaft are resting on.
I’ve long been interested in arcs. Specifically the arcs which separate the yin from the yang in that age old design ( co-joined arcs? squiggle lines? I don’t know what you call it…interlocking spirals? My squiggle is less severe than the yin yang divider because I like the idea of well…less severe and just a gentle arc which flows like easy bends in a river ). Speaking of the yin yang thing, what has most intrigued me by it is its basic construct. Binary. 1 or 0, on or off, this or that and so on. I can go to town with my thinking and typing on this subject. I am Analog Dan after all – the so called digital world is very intriguing and offers lots of wonderful things but…can’t beat analog. Can’t beat the feel of cool sand on the soles of hot feet, ya know?
The arc thing…my arc is uncontained within a circle like the yin yang circle. Or any other circle. My arc has a beginning and an end but who is to say which is which and the whole beginning/end thing…yet another discussion.
So we have basic thoughts on the letter E and the arcs which the rest of the letters in EarthRaft rest on. I want to, obviously, clean the whole thing up. It was, after all, simply quickly penned on a piece of paper atop an imperfect tabletop thus the breaks in ink and flow. I want to add color. The big open circle E and its connected arcs being in bold blue and the other letters in green with maybe a couple other shades of something in the mix. And I think that will do it.
I’m hoping I can get one of the talented kids at work to do it or maybe my Bush League Studios Press partner’s daughter to help. She did some great sketches for our novel Letters – A Twelve Step Journey. I any event I will post design evolution as it comes to pass.