Überink
Identity design for a nonexisting self-made-up philosophical tattoo studio überink – as a part of the thesis written under the guidance of Wojtek Janicki. Graphical stuff was accompanied by a short essay written on the subject: “Tatuaż jako sztuka wizualna”.
Main sign is constructed of a triangle, vertical line and a circle. I could write that from a mundane horizon, in a perfect triangle of opportunities, there grows the desire to perfect sense – but in fact, this is a figure that crystallized itself while I read some philosophical essays, listened to podcasts and walked around the neighborhood at night.
For a main identity font I chose a beautiful and simple Halis Rounded by Ahmet Altun, bought on an annual christmas sale at MyFonts.
Following a restricted pallete of verticals, horizontals, diagonals and circles, I made a nice set of 25 icons in five basic kinda-themed groups:
- nature
- deus
- science
- intimacy
- death
These icons can be used individually, but their main taks is to populate a classic, old-school pattern of stars and dots – which fills the space between the illustrations/tattoos.
In the meantime, in parallel – though not in a parallel world – I was collecting some visual inspirations, making notes on the lives of the philospophers and sketched out their thoughts. I like order, so for each of the arbitrarily selected and the most important thinkers of our-my world I approached with the same manner and in chronological order.
The outcome of the hard work are 12 illustrations – or rather tattoos – depicting a cross section through the human thought from the year -624 in ancient Greece to modern times. The last of the apostles of überink is a very lively professor from Yale.
The final use of the combined forces of illustration and the identity is mainly intended for a large areas of vertical space filled with clean pattern surrounding a big drawings of philosophers.
In practice, this is only a theoretical project – but maybe someday in the future, I will set up a tattoo studio, and then I will dust off those dust-proof files and expand them to meet their final destination.
