In Autumn of 2018, a long-time friend and prior client, Matthew Lidwin approached me to help create the logo to his new band that he was starting. With the work done for EDEN in the past, he was ready to forge ahead on a new chapter as a goth rock musician and needed something that was new for the band but familiar to his long-time fans.
Working together with sketchpads and coffee on-hand, we eventually led away from using roman numerals to recognizable numbers. But that led into another issue. While "6" was just fine after multiple sketches, the "1" was a different story. We kept sketching out "1" only to not be satisfied and erase it time and time again. Eventually, Matt one evening called me as he came to the realization that we should apply the iconic "Trident" into the logo itself. It was right in front of us the whole time!
Combining the sketches with the trident went through a few different arrangements. Leading to the final design of all three digits connected into a single shape. Followed up by creating a degraded and worn look to the overall shape. From there, the challenge of putting the trident within the trident was presented to me.
Simply tacking on the trident on top would not cut it. The solution in my mind was using negative space to place it at the crossing point of the "1". But executing it in a way that would satisfactorily work was the frustrating part. Placing the trident in the shape of a castle window and punching it out proved to be the best route after much trial & error.With the negative space trident placed within the single-piece 616 logo, another decision soon followed. Noticing that the trident at the crossing point of 616 only worked in certain scenarios.
If the space was too small for the trident to be visually functional or pleasing (t-shirt, business card, small logo), then the trident would not be applied. But if the logo was scaled large enough (billboard, large-format printing, high-resolution video), the trident within the crossing point of 616 would be shown.
616 logo with trident at crossing
The end result has excited me as this is only the beginning. This logo marks the start of a new chapter as a designer and a new beginning for my friend in his career as a musician.
