To start with I put everything I learnt together and started thinking about ways in which these could be interpreted into image.
Initial Ideas:
I have found that this task is quite a hard one to do, getting across someones personality in the way of image. It's not something I'm used to, but has been made a lot easier due to Sean's love for Swiss style and minimalist design. This means that I can keep things quite simple, and for a good reason. The main thing I want to do is keep it simple and to the point, not create some letters where it's going to take a while to figure out exactly what I used and why.
As this has to be based on an original typeface, I looked around for a basic one which would be easy to manipulate and fit in what I wanted. Sticking with Swiss Style, I looked at simple typefaces such as Helvetica and Arial, before I found a typeface which was created in the Swiss style era: Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk - which is essentially the swiss style answer to the 'perfect' typeface instead of Helvetica.
I started with a glyph instead of a letter because I find them a little more interesting, starting with the '&'.
As it's a complex letterform, I wanted to keep the design simple, so looked at a few images of Swiss design that I collected, and sketched it out before importing it to Illustrator and doing a basic version of it. I think it worked quite well, although some improvements do need to be made, and the line structures need to be looked at again and changed so it works better as one image instead of a few curved lines put together.
Using the same sort of principle I applied it to the 'O', and found this was much more successful and was much more aesthetically pleasing. The only things I will change is straighten a few of the edges out, but other than that, I think it's the final one for this letter.
He said he liked skateboarding, so I looked at images to do with skateboarders, the deck designs and styles, and found that it will fit in well with Swiss design, as it's mostly block stencil like colours and shapes. From the research I took four images I thought would work well in the letters and created a few abstract traces in Illustrator of them using two different colours, as the final outcomes have to be in only black and white.
The first letter I tried this out on was the 'K'. I combined simple lines and shapes with skateboard deck style curves and the skateboarder image over the top. It's a relatively simple image, but I think it works well and gives an even form, the skateboarder almost looking like he is going down a road with the way the curves are.
City life is something Sean mentioned, which relates pretty well to the skateboarding and urban style of it all, so I combined the style from above and a cityscape to create the 'P'.
The 'A' is a simple design, the same thing repeated over and over again, taken from the design I found on the back of a skateboard. Although it's simple, I think it works well to create the letterform.
As the 'K' is quite a simple form, I wanted to further that style of letter, involving a few more elements to make it a bit more complex and interesting. Keeping with the stencil and urban style, I started to look at block signs for roads etc, and combined that with the general style I have been using of lines and a couple of smooth curves, this with a couple of blocks of the 'A' style, created this 'H' letter form. I think it's definitely the most successful one I've done, and has kept a good balance on either side of the letter.
Saul Bass and the Psycho opening sequence is also something Sean loves, so I started to experiment with that, watching the opening sequence and styles of Bass. I kept it simple to start with, with the 'W', just doing a simple cut and shift, like in the title sequence. I haven't yet decided if it's just going to be like this or developed.
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