Rochester Design

RD was made for the outsiders, for those who pursued a study that their institution didn’t really care about. For the self-starters, who had to pave their own way because one wasn’t given to them. And it was for those who show more than they tell, because doing something is more important than just talking about it.

I distilled the spirit of RD into a single message; “We Got It From Here.”

It’s a declaration that we’re taking the lead, a signal for the can-do attitude and bold, relentless ambition of our members while maintaining our laid-back, casual, and matter-of-fact demeanor. It’s also a reference to my all time favorite album, “We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service “ by A Tribe Called Quest.

I based the rest of the messaging around these ideas as well. We’re always casual, always say what we mean, and can be a little tongue-in-cheek at times.

I was ambitious with our type. I put most of our headers in Druk, usually super, condensed, and italicized. It feels very loud and direct, which I think is important for most brands these days. I also threw in a little Architekt Bold. I love Monospaces, and I think they work really well to allude to both digital and print materials. It also creates a really strong contrast with Druk when put together.

For small amounts of copy I just stuck with Architekt, but for larger paragraphs we use Helvetica Now, a recently refined version of the tried and true.

I put almost everything in a washed out pink and black. No one on our campus is going to get even remotely close to that color, it’s just too out there, so we can easily own it.

The real break through came from an aggressive bloat on our type. A quick edit can bring in a new layer of depth and interest, bringing in a feeling of imperfection, visual manipulation, and unfiltered creativity. It’s not exactly purposeful, but it is very fun, and that’s immensely important for a student club.

To take full advantage of the bloat I designed our logo in a block using Druk Condensed and Wide. For each application of the logo whoever is making the graphic can bloat the logo however they want, cropping it to the original dimensions. It’s a fun way to give ownership and uniqueness to everything we make.

Obviously this logo is very large, so after many attempts to tie all of our visual elements together in an overly-complicated condensed form, I made a hard u-turn to a super simplistic icon. Our school’s mascot is a bee, so I made our icon just about the most simplistic bee possible. It’s also a little reminiscent of a pen I think, but that was just a happy accident.