Alexander Becker provides ideation services, conceptual and technical consulting, as well as design and production services for print and web projects. Alexander Becker is the creative mind behind alter ego Lyrois. »
Finding a visualization for a name, an idea, or a concept, creating logotypes, signets, or whatever you like to call them, always opens the opportunity to explore new paths because, you know, the Lyrois vectors are frozen.
This is where and why I am formally offering to accept commissions for logos created in my now-signature styles.
Old-school logo geometries and clear, strong shapes, papercutting, exploring whitespace and silhouettes... everything in highly accurately drawn vectors -- if this sounds appealing to you, we'll have great times and glorious shapes to create.
The trick is to determine the symbols, find an appropriate representation for each one, hide them within a powerful shape, and forget about them for the legend to be forged.
Commissions start at € 2,000 and end with your and my satisfaction and vectors delivered.
Many versions are created, documented, and preserved; this is where passion, blood, sweat, and tears come into play --
Below is a selection of recent projects with links to backstories and making-ofs --
Imagine a Norseman; son of strong winds, also, a son of the sea. Badass with style and an edge, literally or not. Powerful, mean & nice, steely, but not too polished.
The Windson legend is elaborately packaged, visually legible if you want to, with every detail meaningful, yet powerful on its own, as an impressive shape. The result is essentially a combination of the symbols for Wind and Son. The metal effect is part of the deal, but there is nothing more pure than the papercutting style. I make every detail count, or eliminate it altogether. Talk about hyperinfusion of meaning -- in other words, you cannot over-interpret this logo.
The Lightning and Meteors sign for Alexander Becker Consulting is a non-typographical symbol, capturing and expressing vision and impact in an abstract business realm. The symbols were preselected: lightning and shooting stars, these are the tools and the means, while earth and space are the targets, so to speak.
A rotational ambigram, we want the graphic to look and read identical when turned upside down. This means, each letter has to contain the rotated version of its counterpart -- and vice versa.
From top-left with the ingredients highlighted clockwise. 3-0-p-r-o ... this is what we got and what we wanted to make into the final shape. While you don't need to see all the letters, they do define the whole thing in true form-follows-meaning style.
The Stars'Spring sky disk. A seal with an aggressive outer ring, an onion theory, some mythology, and lots of force-de-frappe.
Still interested? Contact me and we'll make it happen.
Maybe you're looking for free logotype and design work? Read this, please.
The backstory of the latest logo commission. Start with the briefing --
Windson. Imagine a Norseman; son of strong winds, also, a son of the sea. Badass with style and an edge, literally or not. Powerful, mean & nice, steely, but not too polished.
Elements -- The Windson legend is elaborately packaged, visually legible if you want to, with every detail meaningful, yet powerful on its own, as an impressive shape. The shape is essentially a combination of the symbols for Wind and Son. The metal effect is part of the deal, but there is nothing more pure than the papercutting style. I make every detail count, or eliminate it altogether. Talk about hyperinfusion of meaning -- in other words, you cannot over-interpret this logo.
Wind -- Taken from meteorology, the symbol consists of the circle; indicating the sky, the shaft for the wind direction, and the barbs and pennants for the wind speed.
See the station model for interesting use of meaningful symbols.
Treatment -- The brief states "coming from the north," which determines the direction of the shaft. We want a powerful wind, a storm that is -- hence two pennants. Windson blows through clear skies, calling for a hollow circle -- as opposed to the Lightning and Meteors logo, which comes with thunderstorms.
Son -- We turn to heraldry, where the marks of cadency lend themselves to represent what we want. Being a first son, Windson carries a label of three points, a horizontal strip with three tags hanging down (Executed as an inverse shape).
Another symbol for son is the greek letter Upsilon, which shows in some intermediate versions of the logo.
The overall shape is that of a ship coming towards the viewer -- how else does a Norseman move? It adds stability and a sense of direction to the whole image. The zero-ground edges make the logo resembling a jewelized weapon, carrying the mean & nice theme.
First draft --
Different blades and pennants, note the scimitar blade in the lower right, which is out of style here --
Globus cruciger flavors --
Even more sketches, see an oil rig and the Upsilon, also, note the sand drawings in the upper left --
Three weeks, 50+ versions, lots of explorations.
The Lightning and Meteors sign for Alexander Becker Consulting is a non-typographical symbol, capturing and expressing vision and impact in an abstract business realm.
The symbols were preselected: lightning and shooting stars, these are the tools and the means, while earth and space are the targets, so to speak.
The glorious definition of Kitsch --
The ingredients clockwise, from top, right, bottom, to left; abstract and camera-ready.
Earth -- divisions of the circle, superimposed stars, the weather factor, astronomical symbols, and the introduction of the signature papercutting style.
Lightning and meteors -- getting the lightning down and the stars up, because how to impact is as important as where.
Patterns -- altered angles and directions represent different meanings, active, passive, forward, backward, grounded, or airborne, as well as modulated levels of intensity.
Meteors are streaks of light formed when chunks of metallic or stony matter known as meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speeds from space. Most meteoroids disintegrate before reaching Earth. Those that do strike our planet are called meteorites.
You may also want to take a look at the Stars'Spring sky disk, the direct ancestor of Lightning & Meteors.
The Dynasty; ambigram, created in 2008 for thedynasty.org.
An ambigram, also sometimes known as an inversion or flipscript, is a graphical figure that spells out a word not only in its form as presented, but also in another direction or orientation. The text can also consist of a few words, and the text spelled out in the other direction or orientation is often the same, but can also be a different text. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an ambigram as a
calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves.
The goal is a rotational ambigram, we want the graphic to look and read identical when turned upside down. This means, each letter has to contain the rotated version of its counterpart -- and vice versa. The pairs are t and y; h and t; e and s; d and a; and the middle-letter twin y and n. We can chose from upper- as well as lowercase letters.
The sketches identify potential ligatures and strategies to combine each letter-pair. After drawing the first half of the graphic, we copy and rotate it to see if it works upside down and thus completes the second half.
The shapes are drawn geometrically, and the final ambigram emerges from the ligatures. The floral elements are added to reflect the tribal nature of The Dynasty, the skewing adds to the character of the drawing.
An ambigram may or may not be legible as a word, it is, in either case, a unique shape directly evolved from its components. In fact, it acts as a new letter, reflecting the sum of its parts and adding just a little bit more.
The Dynasty represents an old tribe with mythical, even mythological foundations, itself a twisted symbol for an ancient legend.
See also: The Development of the 30pro Logotype
30pro. Constructed in 2008. From top-left with the ingredients highlighted clockwise --
3-0-p-r-o ... this is what we got and what we wanted to make into the final shape. While you don't need to see all the letters, they do define the whole thing in true form-follows-meaning style.
A perfect application for old-school logo geometrics and blocky, strong shapes.
More than 160 different versions were created over the course of nine months.
The last 43 versions are explorations of different paths (literally, check the picture) and various ideas and symbols with the remaining seven (printed in red) being considered back and forth. The cards are now bound in a flipbook producing amazing effects and providing inspiration over and over.
The final logotype incorporates iconic scissors symbolizing the business' roots in cutting plastic. A couple of symmetries expose themselves depending on how you turn it. Try 45 degrees clockwise, for example. Furthermore, the geometric nature enables the creation of diverse patterns which emerge via duplication and cloning.
The trick is to determine the symbols, hide them within the shape and forget about them for the legend to be forged.
What scissors?
The Stars'Spring sky disk. Created in 2007, with the objective being the visualization of "Stars'Spring", highly accurately drawn in Freehand.
Encirclement changes the visual dynamic and tempers the intensity of the aggressive outer wheel.
Shaping the wheel of fire --
Peeling back the layers of the onion --
Tumbling through space --
Any resemblance with the Nebra sky disk is accidental and wasn't discovered until after the design of the Stars'Spring sky disk was finished.
Take a look at the promising descendant of Stars'Spring, it is called Lightning and Meteors and it is where we're going from here.
