Handmade typography used to print the Airplot identity (Image: Airside)

Seeing how this is the first post of a new blog, I’m conscious that things look a little sparse. With this at the forefront of my mind I think it might be useful to link back to a few of the more coherent posts I wrote for the Airside blog over 2009. A good place to start would be some of my Process posts.

The Process articles were developed from a series of talks I’d recently completed that attempted to lift the lid on the design process. ‘I don’t like it! Twenty things you don’t want to hear when re-branding your own company’ used the new Airside identity as a case study to present all the decisions and false starts that contributed to its final execution in exhaustive detail.

The talk was very much a warts-and-all look at the Airside design process and seemed to surprise the audience with just how deep and emotionally involved the design process can become. However, seeing as this was an internal re-branding exercise, I’d be pretty worried if it wasn’t.

Documenting the journey from my first sketches...

...to this - Airside's Airplot identity (Image: Airside)

Spurred by the revelatory nature of the talks, I again attempted to break down the Airside process for a few other client projects, laying bare the thinking and decision making that’s often lost in the distraction of the final execution.

Airplot's modular identity in action (Image: Airside)

My first post concerned the development of an identity for Greenpeace’s latest campaign Airplot. Airplot was conceived as a call-to-action against the expansion of Heathrow Airport and proved to be a particularly interesting project, if not only for the veil of secrecy we had to operate under whilst covered in blue paint.

See the finished modular identity here, and the handmade, hillbilly press that printed it here.

Airside's Dream Ranch trademark (Image: Airside)

Following the interest in the Airplot posts I decided to take a relatively smaller exercise, in this case a trademark design for Airside’s Japanese agent Dream Ranch, and break down the design process even further, touching on such exciting problems like the semiotic pitfalls to look out for when designing for a Japanese company – there are many.

Read the process in all its exhaustive glory here.

Some of my early Dream Ranch scribbles - all design's primordial soup

As a footnote I’ll add that ever since I read Per Mollerup’s excellent book, nay, keystone of trademark design, ‘Marks of Excellence: History and Taxonomy of Trademarks’ (a book which will certainly get it’s own post) I can’t deny that I’m absolutely fascinated by the intellectual reasoning behind a finished design.

In each case I tried to be very thorough with each project’s documentation, as I feel there is as much beauty in the journey as there is in the final execution. Failing that, at least I can show you where the money goes!