So recently I designed a handful of logos for the comedy duo Raffers and Kay. So I thought I’d write up a little blog on the designing of the logos, mainly because this blog is very empty and I thought this might be a good something to fill it with.
The brief I got from Allen Rafferty was to create something
“technical but quirky” and to use primary colours like red, blue, and yellow. Something
I really wanted to get into the logos was a real sense of the characters, to
evoke who they are, they’re eccentricity and childishness and friendly nature.
I had quite a few ideas just from the brief, and so decided
to create a few designs that Allen could choose from. I tried to make them
quite different, giving a couple of different directions to go from; however
they all follow the brief in terms of style and colours.
Version One
So this was just my initial gut response to the task. This
one was done simply on paper with big chunky coloured markers. I thought the
sketchy doodle look would fit the energy of Raffers and Kay well, almost as if
this is what the characters would draw if they were making their own logo. It
tries to be big and epic with the perspective and 3d element, but the very
imperfect style of it adds a quirkiness and childishness.
This first drawing also brought up a main problem to get
around. Now I wanted to place the “Raffers” over top of the “Kay”, however “Kay”
obviously has much less letters then “Raffers”. This made "Raffers" stand out
much more and focus was pulled onto that name. But if I enlarged “Kay” then it
became massive and focus was pulled to that. Now these two are a double act, I
really didn't want the logo to make one of the names seem more important. I probably wasn't very successful in making
them equal in this first version, but the idea I hit on later was using the
distance between the letters to make the two names fill the same amount of space.
Don’t understand? Use this handy dandy visual guide!
This logo also started the yellow oval background trend. It
was only going to be the backing for this logo, done as a way to work the
yellow colour into it, however I kept thinking that the latter logos needed
some kind of back and kept coming back to that shape.
The hand drawn nature of this logo really sets it apart from
the others. The others are all very similar and can be used together without
clashing; they all have the clean graphical look. This leaves the first version
looking almost more like concept art, figuring out the colours and spacing etc.
before creating the finals in Illustrator.
However I really have a soft spot for this one. Yes it’s
messy, yes it doesn't quite fit in, yes a 10 year old could probably have done
it, but I think those might me just the reasons I love it so much…
Version Two
Next, I wanted to make a logo that incorporated Raffers and
Kay themselves. The main reason I didn’t do any logos with really complex
typography or graphic ideas was because I didn't want to pull focus away from
the double act. The logo should really be about them as well as being their
names.
So with this in mind I worked up some ideas of how they
could fit in. I doodled out a few basic thoughts, one of which was to draw the
two as cartoon characters.
I thought this was a bit distracting and hard to look at, as well as perhaps being misleading, as Raffers and Kay is not a cartoon. I thought a slightly more realistic version of this was in order, making the two guys into silhouettes, so that they’re sort of cartoons, but very realistic.
I thought this was a bit distracting and hard to look at, as well as perhaps being misleading, as Raffers and Kay is not a cartoon. I thought a slightly more realistic version of this was in order, making the two guys into silhouettes, so that they’re sort of cartoons, but very realistic.
What this does is take the basic shape of the two and boil it down it its bare essentials. To create the simplified versions I had to ask myself; “What are the main features of Raffers and Kay?”
I also toyed with the idea of having the guys spell out the
first letters of their names using their arms and legs. This idea was partly inspired
by the “Change 4 Life” ads by Ardman. In
the end I thought this design would be too complex and hard to look at. At the
size the figures would have to be at they would become unrecognizable as human
figures, and just become weirdly distorted letters.
The reason the “Change 4 life” logo works is that the figures are large in the image and also very simple, just being clay models.
The reason the “Change 4 life” logo works is that the figures are large in the image and also very simple, just being clay models.
Now I had my idea of cut-out looking silhouettes of the guys, but I had to decide what to do with them. The concept of them holding up signs with their names on just sort of came to me. It’s a good way to tie together the figures and logo, and also show off the different personalities by the way each holds his sign. Allen Rafferty is sort of showing off his sign in a slightly cocky way, whilst Jacob Kay is really struggling with his, wobbling about with it.
Now the phrase from my brief; “Technical but quirky”
immediately made me think of Adobe illustrator. All the vector art around the
internet carries that very precise but very bizarre look. So after my hand
drawn version, I turned to Illustrator for this next version.
To create the image I took a ton of reference pictures of
myself holding up a large plastic lid. Now these are really out of focus (and
slightly embarrassing) but they did the job well. As I couldn't get my whole
body in frame I took to separate pictures and put them together in illustrator.
For the faces I just took screen shots of episodes of “Living with Raffers and Kay” and traced around them using the pen tool in illustrator, doing different shapes for the head and sections of hair. I then basically placed these on top of my body shapes. I did make the Kay figure slightly taller using a Raffers and Kay video as a rough guide.
Finally I sort of created a second variation on this logo. I
thought perhaps that having the figures take up so much more space than the
letters would stop you noticing them so much. The graphics might drown out the
letters. So I just quickly did a version where I cut out the bottom halves of
the characters, effectively halving the size of the logo.
Version Three
For the final logo I wanted to go back to something more
based on the text. The letters aren’t made with an existing font; I drew them
out with the pen tool. I thought a homemade font would add a certain charm to
it, bringing it back to that quirkiness. I also thought this would avoid any
sort of copyright on the font, because I really don’t want to be sued by
anyone. Please.
The “&” symbol is traced from my hand drawn one from the
first logo because… I thought it looked nice and liked the swish to it. Yes, it
has a lot of swish to it. Swish being a technical term.
Even though I wanted it to be text focused I still wanted to
find a way of incorporating the characters. I decided on placing them inside
the letters, making them cut out pieces from the “A”. Luckily for me both of
the names had A’s in so I could just place the guys’ heads into them. I’m also
lucky in that the two’s most unique features are their hair styles, making them
instantly recognizable from hair alone. Great hair guys, um… keep up the great
style… Use shampoo… Um…
I also discovered a
cool way to solve my space problem of the two names not being equal. Whilst I
did do a bit of spacing on the “Kay”, too much would have made it look weird
and drawn out. So my adding the “&” sign I was able to fill space in the
bottom half nicely. If that makes any sense at all.
I just copied the heads from the second logo and placed them
into this one, and then added the now obligatory yellow circle backdrop, and
presto. I’m rather pleased with this one and I think it really fills out the
brief I was given. It also looks really quite snazzy and professional to me,
like I can just imagine it sitting on the DVD cover of a sitcom season.
So in the end I’m very pleased with all the logos, with my
favorites being version 1 and 2. Allen was very pleased with all of them and
ended up throwing a couple up onto the Raffers and Kay Facebook page, Versions
Two and Three, I believe. So yes, hop fully the pair can get a lot of use out
of the logos and their audience can also get a kick out of them.
Thanks for listening… or… reading. And please check out
“Raffers and Kay” (Now with a fancy logo) at these places:
And find me at these spots, you know, if you feel like it:
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