Making the Ostracised Logo

I decided to design a logo for my film to make it easily recognisable and to be used as branding on any future relevant educational projects. I wanted the logo to encompass Ostracised's concept and meaning and therefore somehow needed to incorporate identity with feeling outcast and alone.

I contacted a graphic design student to combine my inspiration and vision to create the logo. I sent her my project proposal so she could understand the film's concept, together with some logos for inspiration, as shown below.

http://www.kijkwijzer.nl/upload/download_pc/7.pdf

After researching many anti-discrimination and relevant logos, I discovered this Dutch logo portraying a very similar message to that of Ostracised. The central figure is shown clearly feeling intimidated and unwelcomed by the surrounding dominant figures. The body language was crucial in portraying this message, as adding too much detail, for example facial expressions, would not translate well as a small logo. However, I felt the body language of all the figures could be interpreted in contradicting ways; the solo figure could either be standing up for himself, as he looks inquisitive, or could be cowering, as he feels threatened and out of place. I want to ensure my logo's message is clear and strong. Another aspect that appealed to me was the simplistic use of black and white. I intend to put my logo on many backgrounds, including my website and video book, and don't want to use any bright colours in the logo which would distract from any media it is printed on.

http://www.kickitout.org/new-logo/

This logo, from Kick It Out, inspired the use of text in my logo. I feel that adding the title of my film to my logo automatically connects the two which I feel is important in creating an easily recognisable brand. This particular logo also includes a slogan, however, Ostracised will not have its own slogan, as it will be adopting The Sophie Lancaster Foundations's slogan, which will be displayed on the website and at the end of the film.

At this point I was also considering how I would write the word Ostracised in any promotional material, including my logo, to ensure recognisable consistency. I knew I didn't want an extreme font, because I wanted to keep it simplistic and easy to read, and avoid it looking tacky. Experimenting with different formats, upper case, lower case, italics, bold, etc, I finally decided to write Ostracised very simply in Helvetica in regular lettering but with a space between each letter, leaving each character isolated,  mirroring She's isolation in the film.

O s t r a c i s e d

I was hesitant to collaborate with another student, as I have previously been let down in the project, however, I wanted to maintain a professional standard for my film and didn't feel confident in creating a logo on my own, which could have resulted in a very time consuming process without achieving a high enough standard in the outcome. I therefore decided to engage with a graphic design student, Bella Green. She accepted and understood my logo inspiration and did some experimentation, which resulted in the suggestion of a fingerprint to represent individual identity. I was delighted with this idea, as I felt it was easy to interpret, as fingerprints are accepted by law as a person's unique identity, and it lost none of its impact by being printed simply in black and white.

We were inspired to include a human figure by the Dutch logo above to portray She and needed to ensure her body language reflected the desired emotion of feeling ostracised.  Researching, we particularly liked this image, because the girl is hugging her knees in distress, sheltering herself from negativity. I felt this was reminiscent of She's body language in scene 1, where she is slumped on the bed.

We experimented with a number of ways of combining these two ideas, keeping in mind that I wanted a logo which could be easily inverted so it could be used on both a white and a black background, including the two shown below:

Design 1

Design 2

I didn't like the hard border on design 1, which had connotations of being an egg and separated the visual too much from the wording. I also didn't like design 2, because I felt the added border distracted from the detail in the fingerprint and made it look more like a zebra print.

I thought this design (shown with both a black and white background) encapsulated the message of Ostracised perfectly. The fingerprint was clear and the human figure clearly represented a girl in a depressed, introverted state. I was delighted that this collaboration was so successful and time efficient.