The Thinking Part

For this assignment, I developed a logo for my name. I also continued developing a logo/signature I use for when I produce art.

NMK

The letters N, M, and K are very linear. For a longtime now my signature has just been a connected scribble of up and down with a less-than sign attached to make the “K”.

I decided my logo for this would be very linear, use long lines, and would look clean, but also slightly hand drawn.

GENERIC ERROR -//-

GENERIC ERROR is name I produce art under. It is a name I came up with over three years ago and have been using since.

When I originally came up with the name, I wanted to create a signature for it. The work I made was a mix of both digital and “real-world”, so I wanted the signature to be able to exist in both worlds.

I sat down at a keyboard and thought about what shapes or forms I could create from just the keys. I eventually landed on -//- (dash - slash - slash - dash).

The symbol has several meanings within it. It is partially related to coding. Also, when hand drawn, the symbol turns into some kind of character or being and can be fairly expressive.

For this project, I wanted to create a clean version I could have to use. I wanted it to either be very simple, or have some motion and weight to it.

Sketches

Sketches of logo ideas on graph paper.
[ Experimenting With NMK Logos ]

Most of my ideas for the NMK logo used many lines. I did also try a few that were more curvy, lower case, or that used my first name.

In the end, I stuck with NMK.

NMK

Ideas

NMK logo with different degrees of kerning.
[ Three variations on NMK ]

The kerning (the verb form of my last name, Kernis…) of the letters was the most important part of this process. I found that the more space between the letters, the less striking the logo.

Final Version

NMK Logo.
[ Final NMK Logo ]

I ended up picking the one with the letters all connected. It’s the closest my signature and it was the most visually interesting.

-//-

Ideas

Thin and heavy stroke version of Generic Error Logo
[ Two Variations on -//- ]

I have created over 200 versions of this logo. For this, I was either going to recreate the way it appears in a text file, or something inspired by one of previous versions.

The weighted design was inspired by a previous illustration I made. I took the logo from it and cleaned it up.

Illustration that says 'what part of any of this feels free? -//-'
[ One Of My Illustrations ]

Final Version

-//- Logo.
[ Final -//- Logo ]