"It began with a spray can, x-acto blades, and some cardboard."
GYPSYPOP RECORDS is a record label Fire Mist founded in 2008 starting with a band called Y La Bamba. Since the first contract was in the form of a napkin at a sushi restaurant in Portland OR, the label team set out to brand the new label and design a logo. As many of you professionals on Behance know, branding is a long process and has many aspects to it - this is a simplified expression of how our team landed on our logo.
*initial plopping the font down with some basic kerning.
1. FONT
After milling through a 1000+ fonts, we chose Insignia. We needed a font that you could sneak onto records that would be clearly legible regardless of the size. Insignia also had a perfect circle for the O's & had a bold style lettering the team was into. The word GYPSY has a lot of meanings depending on where you are in the world, and graphically it is often displayed in a handwritten/brush style font. Considering that POP refers to POP Art and POP Music, we started looking for a symbol that bridged GYPSY+POP. After numorous drawings of unicorns, blimps and rainbows - I found that by adding a single line to the O, a recognisable shape emerged which could be interpreted as a Lollipop.
*The term lollipop may be from Gypsy origin, as the word for red apple in Romany language is loli phaba.
2. STENCIL
When designing, I like to replicate the mark in different mediums, such as cutouts, stencils, and other raw materials to explore the logo in physical terms. Since this logo was for a record label, I printed the font onto a piece of paper, traced it onto cardboard and made a stencil to see how it looked with spray paint and sloppy lines. While cutting out the letters for the stencil, it became apparent that a part of the P needed to be left intact so that the center of the letter would not get "punched out" when spray painting the stencil. This design change, out of structural necessity for the stencil, assisted the branding and look of the logo and became the final stylized font.
3. LOLLIPOP
After stencilling the logo, a subtle design element was needed so the Lollipop differed from the common search symbol. The first step was switching the direction of the line connected to the O, having it come from the left vs. the right side. After that I applied a crescent moon type of shape to the O giving the lollipop a more rounded look. Then added yellow and a bit of a gradient and viola! complete!
4. SUNRISE DESIGN
After stencilling the logo, dialing in a lollipop crescent moon, a solar aspect was needed as an alternate design for lifestyle products and graphic based block outs. Having a sliver off the bottom of the lollipop stem and placing the horizon line within the center of the stencil, yet removing its form was a way to achieve implied dimension within the flat plane.
