My talk for International Women’s Day, encapsulating the importance of research in a design practice, and the fact that there’s growing opportunity to have multi-faceted careers in the digital / design world.
Interrogating the Victorian board game, The Pirate and The Traders of the West Indies by William Spooner and exploring its relation to British Empire and the indoctrination of Victorian children.
Looking back at my uni days, I realised a lot of my work, at the time, was driven by my relationship with Trinidad and other personal experiences. The notions of being one of a kind in Cardiff often echoed through the decisions I made as a student, and little did I know, as a designer. Flash forward to today: it was as though all the past work amounted to this. A very special project landed in my lap, and I was eager to sink my teeth in. After all, it’s not everyday that you get to brand where you come from.
From the very beginning of my research, I had set particular limitations in the way I wanted to communicate what Trinidad is notable for. Naturally, there are multiple Caribbean stereotypes existing in the visual world, and while I’ve accepted that they exist for a reason, I’d also humbly placed them in the red zone, or what I’d like to call my “don’t resort to” list.
Of the many factors that make Trinidad unique, our cadence and use of language stand as the most memorable of them all. It’s in the sing of our song, the stress of our syllables and the casualty in our lexicon. Home or ‘foreign,’ we can never escape what is inherently ours. This brand identity therefore, pays homage to our ongoing song.
After collecting multiple recordings of the word “Trinidad” by local Trinidadians, I’d narrowed it down to one mother-source that best highlighted the flow of our voice.
Each character has a different width (expansion) to convey the stress of that particular letter when the word is pronounced. This, thereafter, sets an overall direction to the logo design as it becomes reactionary to the platform which it exists.
The main logo form can transform into a more vertical-friendly alternative where two blocks are placed on either side. This not only emphasises the continuous ‘song-like’ effect in our tone, but is also reflective of ‘sound bars’ that exist in musical score sheets.
B+W Images by Brendan Delzin.
The less we conceal, the more our song reveals. Depictions of our island are portrayed through these ‘bars,’ again bringing a sense of movement to the brand, alike the never ending rhythm of our unique Trinidadian dialect.
ZH
