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 projects – Cut a Rug . All We Have is Now – he appointed us once again to develop his own brand identity.

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

Focusing on the angles for the bespoke type, 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 lettering was complete, various type weights, compositions and arrangements were tested to ensure 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 would need to work and be applied to an eclectic mix of campaigns and designs, many of which would be out of our control. Consequently, aside from the selection of a typeface the remainder of the branding strategy remained deliberately loose to maintain flexibility and the freedom to continuously evolve.