Overview
David is a talented young photographer (and a great guitar player) I had the pleasure of working with at US Digital.
David wanted something that represented himself as clearly as possible with little metaphor or abstraction. Initially, he was very keen on the idea of utilizing his signature. Unfortunately, his handwriting bore enough similarity to Anton Corbjin’s seminal work for Depeche Mode that I decided, for the sake of distinctiveness, to abandon that path. I did believe there was some graphical goodness hidden within the initials “DM,” so I created many treatments minus the handwriting quality of my initial sketches.
The final composition is extremely simplified, with the same “shark fin” shape repeated thrice with one additional line to separate the “D” from the “M.” Although many color mockups were created, in the end it was decided that the charcoal and ivory treatments matched David’s aesthetic most appropriately. The accompanying typeface is Gill Sans, chosen for how tightly-kerned it allowed the logotype to become in spite of the consonant-heavy, polysyllabic surname.