This week I worked on logos for my chapter of the International Costumers’ Guild, the NoVA Costumers’ Guild. We just started up this summer and things are moving slow, but hopefully we will get our feet under us.  We already have lots of great ideas, so feel free to come and check us out on Facebook. 

We really need a logo, so here’s my attempt at coming up with something:

I used Adobe Illustrator to work on this project. I thought about my guild and how we want to really promote the craft of costuming.  I first tried to make a masque, thinking that it would be fun to hearken back to the classic costume masques of the past.  I wasn’t happy with how my masks were turning out using the pen and shape tools.  I might continue to work on this, but for now it was not in the Tarot cards.

Our guild members work on costumes that are historical, recreations, fantasy, futuristic, you name it. Knowing this, I wanted to go for something all encompassing, and you can’t get much more all encompassing than a Supernova. It’s not the first time someone in the area went with space since we love calling ourselves “NoVA” here in Northern Virginia.

I ended up utilizing the ellipse tool and then the twirl tool to make the nova/Milky Way galaxy whorl I used for the “o” in NoVA.  From there I added some stars with the flare tool.  I wanted to continue the space/science theme and after several different fonts, I settled on a Modern font named “Sky Marshal Super-Italic”.  I left a space for the whorl and then adjusted the space between the letters by a skootch to make a little more room.  I matched this font with Honey Script Light for “Costumers’ Guild”. I wanted something slightly from the script family to symbolizing the blend from future to classic – just like our gambit of costumes.

I opted for a monochromatic colour scheme featuring purple for multiple reasons.  One, to match the richness of the night sky, purple seemed fitting. Second, purple speaks towards mysterious and expensive – both of which comprises costuming.  We aren’t in this to be cheap and we are actively attempting to be something we are not. Purple is made of both red and blue – warm and cold colors and through the blending of warm and cold you get something beautiful, just like blending different things in the art of costuming. Purple fits for fantasy, it fits for science-fiction, it fits for creativity, and it fits for passion.

I created this logo for the use of the NoVA Costumers’ Guild, so the audience would be those who enjoy costuming as a hobby, an art form, and a career as well as to those in and around the Northern Virginia region familiar with our general use of “Nova”.

I spent a lot of time talking with a professional graphics designer this week to try to learn more about what goes into a logo and how to best utilize my software. Thanks to his tutelage, I learned a few important lessons regarding shapes and a few other things. I’m grateful for the lessons I learned this week.  I also really enjoyed learning how to manipulate shapes with the tools like “twirl”, “warp”, “crystallize”, and etc. It is pretty amazing what you can do to even a simple shape.

–Lady O