Showcase

Logo: Lightning and Meteors

2009-06-09T16:10:00.004+02:00

The Lightning and Meteors sign for Alexander Becker Consulting is a non-typographical symbol, capturing and expressing vision and impact in an abstract business realm.

The symbols were preselected: lightning and shooting stars, these are the tools and the means, while earth and space are the targets, so to speak.

The Money Shot

The glorious definition of Kitsch --

The Legend

The ingredients clockwise, from top, right, bottom, to left; abstract and camera-ready.

Earth -- divisions of the circle, superimposed stars, the weather factor, astronomical symbols, and the introduction of the signature papercutting style.

Lightning and meteors -- getting the lightning down and the stars up, because how to impact is as important as where.

Patterns -- altered angles and directions represent different meanings, active, passive, forward, backward, grounded, or airborne, as well as modulated levels of intensity.

Research & Resources

Lightning

Weather Symbols

Meteors

Meteors are streaks of light formed when chunks of metallic or stony matter known as meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speeds from space. Most meteoroids disintegrate before reaching Earth. Those that do strike our planet are called meteorites.

Coins

Astronomical Symbols on Ancient Coins

Genealogy

You may also want to take a look at the Stars'Spring sky disk, the direct ancestor of Lightning & Meteors.

Motivational Poster: The Rules of the Game

2009-06-02T05:21:00.001+02:00

A collateral from a recent, undisclosed consulting project, the rules of the game are a simple no-list, designed to illustrate the requirements of maximizing accountability and eliminating distractions to ensure the highest grade of professionalism in a tightly-knit team.

No Excuses, No Rationalizations
No Bragging, No Ego
No Talismans, No Coin Flipping, No Gambling
No Whining, No Slack, No Hesitation

Please note that the rules above are a means to improve accountability and professionalism within a team. It's a list of work ethics, not a prescription for private life.

On the other hand...

A PDF-file is available upon request.

Ambigram: The Dynasty

2008-11-11T11:11:00.002+01:00

The Dynasty; ambigram, created in 2008 for thedynasty.org.

An ambigram, also sometimes known as an inversion or flipscript, is a graphical figure that spells out a word not only in its form as presented, but also in another direction or orientation. The text can also consist of a few words, and the text spelled out in the other direction or orientation is often the same, but can also be a different text. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an ambigram as a calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves.

What?

The goal is a rotational ambigram, we want the graphic to look and read identical when turned upside down. This means, each letter has to contain the rotated version of its counterpart -- and vice versa. The pairs are t and y; h and t; e and s; d and a; and the middle-letter twin y and n. We can chose from upper- as well as lowercase letters.

Playing around

The sketches identify potential ligatures and strategies to combine each letter-pair. After drawing the first half of the graphic, we copy and rotate it to see if it works upside down and thus completes the second half.

Putting it all together

The shapes are drawn geometrically, and the final ambigram emerges from the ligatures. The floral elements are added to reflect the tribal nature of The Dynasty, the skewing adds to the character of the drawing.

Readability

An ambigram may or may not be legible as a word, it is, in either case, a unique shape directly evolved from its components. In fact, it acts as a new letter, reflecting the sum of its parts and adding just a little bit more.

The Dynasty

The Dynasty represents an old tribe with mythical, even mythological foundations, itself a twisted symbol for an ancient legend.

30pro

2008-05-11T12:25:00.004+02:00

30pro. Constructed in 2008. From top-left with the ingredients highlighted clockwise --

3-0-p-r-o ... this is what we got and what we wanted to make into the final shape. While you don't need to see all the letters, they do define the whole thing in true form-follows-meaning style.

A perfect application for old-school logo geometrics and blocky, strong shapes.

More than 160 different versions were created over the course of nine months.

The last 43 versions are explorations of different paths (literally, check the picture) and various ideas and symbols with the remaining seven (printed in red) being considered back and forth. The cards are now bound in a flipbook producing amazing effects and providing inspiration over and over.

The final logotype incorporates iconic scissors symbolizing the business' roots in cutting plastic. A couple of symmetries expose themselves depending on how you turn it. Try 45 degrees clockwise, for example. Furthermore, the geometric nature enables the creation of diverse patterns which emerge via duplication and cloning.

The trick is to determine the symbols, hide them within the shape and forget about them for the legend to be forged.

What scissors?

Stars'Spring 2007

2008-04-21T10:47:00.009+02:00

The Stars'Spring sky disk. Created in 2007, with the objective being the visualization of "Stars'Spring", highly accurately drawn in Freehand.

Pics from the Shop

Encirclement changes the visual dynamic and tempers the intensity of the aggressive outer wheel.

Shaping the wheel of fire --

Peeling back the layers of the onion --

Tumbling through space --

Relatives

Any resemblance with the Nebra sky disk is accidental and wasn't discovered until after the design of the Stars'Spring sky disk was finished.

Descendants

Take a look at the promising descendant of Stars'Spring, it is called Lightning and Meteors and it is where we're going from here.

Alexander Becker: A Designer's Portfolio

2008-04-20T23:06:00.001+02:00

Showcase. Showing old and new, best of and most recent projects and stuff that deserves the mention.