Stella Lettering
I've spent way too much time over the last two days redrawing and tweaking the lettering of the Stella logo. This isn't even supposed to be part of the project I'm working on for them right now, but as a long-time collaborator, I'd wanted to clean it up for so long and suggested it at our last meeting. They were amenable to the idea, but a bit confused by my almost compulsive desire to do this. C described my impulse like some people's urge to pop pimples...
I'm far from an actual lettering artist, so this is largely the result of tackling some things that stood out to me as a designer with the original (or the resulting vector file after countless bitmap reproductions over the years) by retracing the letters in Illustrator and obsessively adjusting anchor points and vector handles. I don't know if this is "right" from a lettering-designer's perspective and I'm not going to go into all the decisions I took as I did this, as I'm more interested in the mind state I got into while doing this work. I had a ton of other work to do, all sorts of other things on my plate, yet there I was, spending hours adjusting the smallest of details on something I didn't even have to do. And now I'm posting about it?
It was/is certainly a form of procrastination, but one that felt productively satisfying and also quite meditative. Given the chaos surrounding life right now, it was a respite to maintain focus on something for so long, to slowly improve a curve until it felt right. Doing this type of detail-oriented work feels about as close to craft as graphic design gets for me these days. No big concepts or aesthetic gestures, but acute noticing work and technical problem-solving. The end result is perhaps a minor improvement, one that most people won't notice. On the flip side, I'm not even sure the client will accept it, given how attached they are to the existing logo. I'm still not satisfied with the changes I've made and could probably keep working on this for many more hours/days if I didn't have other things I really need to get to. So why do this?
I've been thinking a lot about an ethics of craft given the current state of the world and my own mental state within it. About the importance of noticing and making in dark times. Doing this kind of work (for an organization whose mission I care deeply about) feels like an act of "care where no-one does" (to quote the title of Freek's book). Small, slow, intentional gestures. Do they make a difference? Can you see it?