Another one of this weeks learning assignments was to look at a logo and analyze which parts of the gestalt principles are used in the design. These principles consists of different design methods you can use that explain how you can place elements together and apart to make the design more striking and eye catching for a bystander. Here are some of the different principles explained with text and a visual example.
These law principles were created by psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt koffka and Wolgang Kohler who wanted to understand how humans typically gain meaningful perceptions when there’s a chaotic stimuli around them. They made a set of laws that were going to adress this natural compulsion for the brain to seek order and disorder. This makes the eye see a series og elements as an image or an illusion. These laws and principles shows how our brains create structure by default.
«Gestalt Principles is a set of laws arising from the 1920’s psychology, describing how humans see objects by grouping similar elements, recognizing patterns and simplifying complex images.»
Wolfgang Kohler
It is a powerful but a natural trick to use in the design industry. It focuses on perspective and design standards. Graphic designers have used these principles as methods in advertisment and encapsulating company values in iconic logos. Today there’s a lot of designers that use these different principles when they are designing new logos for different brands and companies. If you take a closer look at some logos you will notice how they’ve been made with well placed elements that catch the eye.
In this assignment we were supposed to examine this specific logo and explain what gestalt principles we feel is used in the making of the logo. Before I go into what principles I think this logo has i’m going to first describe first thing I thought the design of the logo. The first thing I noticed about the logo was the hidden U shape in the design. The logo consists of one color making it have a simple and clean look, but there’s a lot of design elements created of small visuals making it more interesting. The way the logo is designed with round edges gives it a calm and flowy feeling.
Gestalt Principles in the design
When I was looking over the principles and considering what this logo has of it, I found many possibles design principles used, but here is the three principles I think stands out.
The first thing I noticed when looking at the logo was how the designer had created the U shape. I consider this to be a use of the «closure» principle in the design. When we look at the arrangement of the elements, we look for one recognizable pattern. In this design the designer has arranged the different visual nature elements so it’s tricks the eye to see a U shape. With this design the brain automatically fills the missing parts to create the rest of the visual.
I think another design principle used in this logo is the «common region». You can see an example of this in the design when you look at the proximity of the visual elements together. The visual objects are put together within the same closed region, so we percieve them as being grouped together, instead of apart. This is also a factor of how the U shape is visualized so well in this design. Something I really appreciate about all the elements in the logo is that every little element has a significant meaning to the company.
The last principle I feel stands out in the logo design is «Continuity». If you look at the logo name there’s a nice font that makes the lines of the letters flow together. The designer used the same color on the logo and the brand name making them seem whole and connectied. The design also has the same flowy design with soft edges on all the elements including the name, making them feel even more connected as a whole.
Remaking the Logo Design
The next step of the assignment was to take the original logo design, choose the principles you want to use and create three new logos for the company using them. For me to be able to make new logo designs for the company, but still stay true to their values and ideology, I had to do some research first. This was an important first step to finding good design ideas for that specific company.
When I first started this assignment I had no idea what Unilever was or what the company did. That’s why it was really surprising to realize that I see their product on a daily occurance. Unilever actually makes some of the best known brands in the world, you just don’t see their logo on every product. The company stands behind products like Ben&Jerry’s, Dove, Lipton, Magnum, Axe and many, many more.
Unilever is a transnational consumer goods company with headquarters in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The company products are food and beverages, cleaning agents, beauty product and personal care products. As you can see the company has a lot of products people use every day and today you can find their products in 190 countries around the world.
Something that is really important for the company and is promoted a lot on their website is «Sustainability». The company wants to make a sustainable living commonplace for it’s consumers. They describe this as the purpose for their buisness. The company has products from a range of 400 brands that gives them a unique place in peoples lives around the world. This makes it even more important for them to fulfil their company purpose.
«Whatever the brand, wherever it is bought, we’re working to ensure that it plays a part in helping fulfil our purpose as a business – making a sustainable living commonplace.
Taken from their website Unilever.com
Having this in mind I started sketching out some immidiate ideas for the designs. For the first logo design I really wanted to get across the partnership and friendship between brands and the consumers, which is the foundation of the company. The first thing that came to mind when thinking of these values were two hands holding each other in a helping manner. As you can see on my sketches below I started with two hands doing a handshake. This felt a little to formal and had a buisness front to the design that I didn’t like for the design concept.
Even though Unilever does buisness between the brands, I felt like it should feel more as teamwork and a mutual friendship when looking at the logo. Going online for some refrence hands I used the picture below as inspiration for my design. These hands have less of a formal look and generates trust and partnership. This fit the design concept I wanted to create and represent for the company.
These hands are illustrated in a realistic way, but I wanted to simplify them a lot and get the look of my first sketch instead. The idea I had in mind was to use the closure principle in the hands symbol Using negative space between the hands and fingers, using the white background as the rest of the image. With this principle the eye automaticly put the negative space together with the positive, creating the whole design.
Having an idea in mind and using the refrence I went straight to creating the design digitally. This process went relatively smooth but I did have to do some regulations with the negative space between the hands as I was designing it. It was important to create enough negative space between the elements to create the principle effect I wanted. I decided to include the company name, because I found that it completed the logo design nicely. I chose a bold, thick font with round edges representing stability and trust in the company and their partnership between brands.
For my next logo design I wanted to focus on the purpose of the buisness, the importance of sustainability. The whole idea behind sustainability is to give opportunity for growing and development for years to come, without damaging other things in the process. This was obviously an important thing for the company and something that defines them and their values.
That’s how I came to the idea to incorporate a growing plant in their company name. The growing plant represents sustainability, growth and evolution in the company. I sketched out their name on paper and tried changing the «i» in Unilever to a little plant. I really liked how it turned out and decided to develop the idea further. Here are the beginning sketches.
When I was designing the logo digitally I wanted to keep the theme of round edges as the original logo had. I really liked how it looked and made the company seem more friendly and «humane». In the process of making the design I only used blue for the logo. This looked nice, but didn’t make it stand out enough. Using the focal point principle really helped making the desing more distinct. The purpose behind this method was to make an area of interest that would catch peoples attention. Changing the color of the plant made the symbol more eye cathing and the logo as a whole more interesting. Here you can see the difference it made.
Using the focal point principle really made the plant stand out in the design. This helps get the hidden concept across better and makes it more interesting for a bystander seeing it for the first time. Here is the finished logo design using the focal point principle.
For my last design I had some trouble choosing the principle I wanted to use, and how to use it in a design. Going through the different principles I decided I wanted to use the similarity principle. I didn’t do a lot of hand sketching for this one because I only used lettering in the design and it was more convenient to regulate different fonts digitally.
The way I used the similarity principle in this logo created a nice looking design, but it didn’t really say a lot about the company and the values behind it. I think it could fit really nice as a print, but not so much as a logo representing the company. Even so, it was a fun design to make.
It was challanging to make three logo designs for the same company, but it really helped using the principles to spark some ideas. It was a really good learning experience and a great way tp practice making logo designs that gives a message to the audience. My favorite logo design was definitely the closure design with the hands together. I think it really represents and tells something about the company when you see it. The first thing that comes to mind when I look at it is stability, trust and teamwork.
I really liked the focal point design as well, but felt that the plant theme can be seen in a lot of enviromental companies already. I think that would make the logo not as unique in the big picture and may make people believe their an enviromental company. This factor made me even more sure about choosing the closure design as the chosen logo for Unilever. So for the last part of the assignment, here is the logo closure logo in a vector format.
Sources
interaction-design.org/literature/topics/gestalt-principles
usertesting.com/blog/gestalt-principles/
Unilever.com
My Reflective Journal 