All designers tend to look at designs through a filter of their own sensibilities. The first step toward the development of a successful architectural website is to determine the architect's personal sensibilities.
To begin the process, I asked the architect for a list of other architects and designs he admired, and enquired about the websites he felt represented the type of presentation that would reflect his own professional style. I asked for a short list of his major architectural and artistic influences (periods or specific designers). "If you happen to know of a couple of websites with an overall graphic design you absolutely adore," I said, "that would be useful, too." During this process, we determined that, in addition to an overall website design, he also needed an updated logo to better reflect his professional work.
Design Development
To provide hints as to his general design sensibility, I asked him to send along any ideas he might like for his logo and site, and to name his three favorite fonts (typefaces). "If you do not know their names," I said, "please send a few picture examples or a description."
The typefaces and artwork he supplied suggested an art deco sensibility, very much in keeping with New York fashion of the '20s. Some of the designers and architects he mentioned as influences, however, had a more organic look.
Thus, the first question I needed to have answered was whether he wanted to go for an "organic" look or the more design-heavy "modern" look (...or ???) for his new website.
In reply to my email, the architect named his preferred fonts as: Century Gothic, Garamond and BookAntiqua.
The architects he named as influences included:
As always, one must tread gingerly the line between forthrightness and tactfulness. "Please forgive any incorrect assumptions in my analyses of your architectural influences," I wrote as a preface to my design analysis of his influences, "with which you are obviously far more familiar than I."
Otto Wagner's work, I wrote, seems to span both the Art Nouveau (e.g., Majolica House) and early modern styles. I can see some potential in having a website border or design motif similar to that seen in the facade above the Post Office Savings Bank at www.greatbuildings.com. I asked him: "Is this look more or less interesting to you than his earlier works?"
Alvaro Aldo, I noted, spans early modern and modern motifs, suggesting a more organic sensibility.
Frank Lloyd Wright, of course, was a master of the principles of "organic architecture," of which Fallingwater is a great example. It is, however, somewhat more linear, with a "art meets science" sensibility, a little like some of Neutra's work.
RonChamp is thought of as "expressionist modern," and represents quite a different style from the preceding examples -- a rather more "soft form" composition.
Similarly, Candella favoured tensile shell structures -- again, a highly organic look, favouring form over mass.
Vasquez' work (which I was not that familiar with, prior to the start of this project) seems to be rather more linear.
Cardinal's buildings are acclaimed examples of "curvilinear, organic buildings."
I'd also characterize most Japanese architecture as having a strongly integrated organic sensibility.
Thus, I concluded that the look the client favours most strongly is organic.
Now, on to architectura.ca (which, I correctly assumed, was the site he meant -- there's isn't an architectura.com). This page tends to be:
On the brighter side...
Armed with this information, we managed to nail down a design spec for the site. After a few hours of discussion as to the number of pages and features he wanted to incorporate, I offered a price quote incorporating the "organic" concepts, 3D models and styles similar to architectura.ca, plus a quote for a logo design.
The client then sent some photos, rough logo designs created by an amateur designer friend of his, an AutoCAD model of the design he wanted to render in 3D and a few printouts of 1/250 scale blueprints, suitable for scanning.
Logo Critique
When developing a new logo design, it's often a case where the best choice just "feels right." After we had put together a dozen or so designs, I suggested that he print them out and show the designs to a "focus group" (e.g., design-savvy friends and co-workers) and ask them which ones they thought best reflected his image and work. Here are some of the comments on the designs:
Logo 1: Subtle lighting, with a brick wall feeling and mechanical precision to the lettering (called, in fact, "Mekanik"). Very solid, suggests subtlety, precision, European modernist sensibilities.
Logo 2: The mood is more austere, with the gray-and-white horizontal bars and curved surfaces suggesting the Guggenheim Museum (architected, of course, by Frank Lloyd Wright) in NYC.
Logo 3 (Black and green) - Classy, but totally the wrong typeface. It's an old style "lead type" serif face most commonly associated with the Garamond family and the 16th century. Garamond (which I happen to love, a fondness I suspect your designer shares) is famous for uneven, inexact dots on the "i", spurs (serifs) that aren't even, and other eccentricities. It's hardly the image most architects would want to present, although it's probably the most professional looking of the designs submitted by your designer. The green could potentially be useful to say "organic," though.
Logo 4: A bit girly looking. It is a Venetian italic font -- another Renaissance or "old style" typeface, popularly associated with the late 15th century. This typeface also contains some attributes from the so-called "Transitional" (17th to 18th century Dutch and English) era, with some of the inexactitudes noted in my comments about Garamond, above. Take a close look at the "K" - Personally, I don't think a typeface with spurs that look "bent and not matching" is really the image you should project. Too much space wasted.
Logo 5: It's an 18th century Roman chisel face (Caslon Openface), combined with an old style lead type face from the 16th century. Most designers would cringe at the idea of mixing two fundamentally incompatible eras in this fashion. I say "Blecch," unless this "old and new world" sensibility is what you want to project. I think it's a travesty, personally. As the TWT Style Guide states, "Old style suits a love poem."
Logo 6: An italic Avante Garde - Well, at least we're in the 20th century. This is generally considered an advertising face, (See my notes about Calvin Klein, below). It's not one of my favorites, but at least it's mechanical and deco-influenced, as some of your cited influences are. The italics seem gratuitous to me, and it look off-center. The white text isn't comfortably centered vertically, either.
Logo 7: not enough space above and below the text, and, as I noted above, Avante Garde isn't one of my faves, but at least we're in the same era as some of your influences! I suppose my main problem with Avante Garde is that it is TOO cold. Many of your architectural influences are more organic. This looks a bit like a clothing label to me. (This is the typeface Calvin Klein uses.)
In the end, we narrowed the list down to Logos 1 and 2, and chose to develop a few prototype pages using each design.
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