Will Clarke Typographic brand identity

Will Clarke is an established Dj and Producer. Signed to Dirty Bird he frequently tours the States, has remixed for Idris Elba and his own tracks are regularly played by legends such as Carl Cox, Pete Tong & Annie Mac. Having previously worked with Superfried on numerous design and branding solutions – Cut a Rug . All We Have is Now – he appointed graphic design agency Superfried once again to develop his own brand identity.

The brief specified the new brand identity should be clean and simple. This aligned with our usual approach, so we maintained this creative strategy by crafting a minimal, bespoke wordmark with no additional logo. However, the angled letters - W, A, R, K - in addition to the negative space of the triple L's, would make this typographic design rather challenging.

Focusing on the angles for the bespoke typography, the Greek sigma sign was employed to replace the E, reflecting and balancing the negative space generated by the K. A minimal look was further reinforced via the removal of unnecessary character elements where suitable. Negative space generated by the three L's was addressed by shortening the horizontal arm of two of them. Once the logotype design was complete, various type weights, logo lock-ups, and design iterations were tested to ensure the final creative solution was sufficiently versatile in all scenarios.

Moving onto brand application for marketing material, a simple graphic device was designed to create an elegant interaction between photography and the new wordmark. This was achieved via two subtle, angled lines using a blend mode. The branding solutions would need to work and be applied to an eclectic mix of campaigns and communication projects, many of which would be out of our control. Consequently, aside from the selection of a typeface the remainder of the brand strategy remained deliberately loose to maintain design flexibility and the creative freedom to continuously evolve.