The Ten-Year Itch

By now you’ve noticed our snappy new logo on the cover of the September issue. Nothing against the old one, which we had for more than ten years, and which was nicely serviceable and solid and stalwartttttttt… sorry, I just totally fell asleep for a second. Anyway, with all the changes happening around here, we needed a logo with personality! Something with a little zip! So, we bid that old logo a fond farewell (“It’s not you, it’s us,” we said, tossing its suitcases into the parking lot) and waited to see what our art department would do next.

There were a lot of meetings. A Logo Transition Team was dispatched to rid us of all traces of the ex-logo. We heard whisperings that a local type-design star had been hired to create our new look. Then suddenly, voila! Our first glimpse of the new branding—cool and friendly and fun. Love at first sight!

For us, anyway. On the design end, there was plenty of back-and-forth, tweaking and tinkering to get things just right. Our art department knew what they wanted: First, something dramatically different from the ex. Two, the right vibe: fresh, contemporary, but still classic. Three, the perfect man for the job: They hired Cyrus Highsmith, a RISD-grad who lives in Providence, teaches typography at RISD and is a senior designer at the Font Bureau in Boston.

I called Cyrus this morning to ask him more about the redesign:

How did you come up with this style?
The art department wanted a script, something totally different that would surprise readers. I researched different scripts—there are a lot of them, like you’d see on a wedding invitation, that look very good, very ornate, but they aren’t bold enough. Then there are scripts like on an old car, but the art department didn’t want anything too slick or too retro. We looked at different things, I did some sketches. I think this is a friendly logo but it still has a certain amount of sophistication.

Do you draw the letters by hand?
I do a lot of sketching in pencil and then I draw it on the computer. 

Is logo design different from creating a new typeface?
When you draw a logo, you know exactly which letters you’re drawing and how they’re going to be combined. So you draw them in a way that takes advantage. In a typeface, you’re doing a whole alphabet, so you have to plan around the fact that the letters can be combined in any order.   (Quick glossary: Times New Roman is a typeface, which is a family of fonts, such as Times New Roman Bold and Times New Roman Italic.)

The “I” is pretty cool. What’s up with it?
It’s based on a traditional cursive “I.” I was worried about it, actually, because it’s not as recognizable. It could look like a “J” or an “O” if you saw it on its own. The context is critical.

Why draw a logo from scratch instead of using an existing typeface?
I often do start with something existing and then refine and adapt it. But there aren’t as many scripts to choose from. Plus, I like to draw new things. You can make it more distinct.

Pretty neat, huh? Tell us what you think.