Hanja
I was commissioned to create a logo for an electronic producer under the name Hanja. Hanja is the Korean name for Han Chinese characters (Chinese: 漢字; pinyin: hànzì). More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. The task was to design the logo as well as envision the brand identity.
The client wanted the Korean phonetic character of “h,” standing for “Hanja” as his logo, and had a vision for it to embrace dry strokes like in Chinese calligraphy. The challenge was to translate a calligraphic mark into a logo.
As a brand study it was important to also think about the identity and how everything would play together. The logo should aim to work in larger settings more than small, since the long-term goal would be to showcase it in large venues. The final deliverable was a creative brief.
Brand Identity Designer
Music
2019
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, calligraphic pens and paper
Logo Design
Brand Identity
Creative Direction
I sketched several versions of the character on pen and paper for the client to look at. Then over several iterations of the logo, I used finer strokes for when the brush loses pressure, and further smoothed out the rest of the shape. At the end to make the logo subtely fit better with the typeface, I etched and embedded parts of the typeface letters, kind of a design easter egg. The final deliverable was a full creative brief with usage guidelines, mockups, and a brand styleguide.
