OPEN FOR WORK!
D Wang is a queer Chinese-Michigander illustrator and designer in Brooklyn. They’re also helping to run DICE, the Ditmas Indie Comics Extravaganza!
Their non-profit work includes the Center for Urban Pedagogy, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Understood (coming soon).
Their branding work includes Ritesh Gupta, the founder of Useful School and Forest Fire, a women-led production company.
Their passion projects include comics and zines and Insatiable, an ongoing project about Reddit hookups.
Resume | LinkedIn | dwangzhao@gmail.com
Ritesh Gupta - A Rebrand
Logo and expressicons for Ritesh Gupta
Background:
As the former Design Director of Hyperakt, Ritesh Gupta is no stranger to a rebrand. But this time was a little different, with the founding of “Useful School”, a series of courses by and for creatives of color.
Their rebrand needed to capture Ritesh’s individuality, innovativeness, and eccentric style (their eyewear and hat combos are 👌🏼).
Through the process, I expanded the originally scope to include a library of “expressicons” that became the motifs for the larger brand.
It all started with a Slack message...
The inspo includes For the People’s Be Equitable branding, and Ritesh’s grandma’s peacock wrist tattoo 🦚
^ include picture of ritesh’s hats and glasses that they sent me
The opportunity:
Knowing my playful and conscientious illustrations, Ritesh tasked me with taking on the rebrand. They most emphasized their desire for a logo that felt unique, almost iconographic, and simple. Pointing to For the People’s rebrand of Be Equitable, Ritesh noted the bold contrast of the logo and logomarks.
I began with two approaches-- one that felt marker-drawn, the other more illustrative and edgy. We ended up melding the two approaches together.
-talk about the process of making the hats and glasses like dress-up doll features on the Ritesh “R”
^include scrolling images of the hats and expressions throughout the various drafts.
The challenge:
The biggest challenge for me was
-The project became more than just a logo design, but it was also about creating a customizable R that could accomodate different glass frames, hats, and expressions! Did we ultimately end up doing that? Not yet...
-when something is so small, the details are the most important. Also, trying to determine how icon-like the letters in Ritesh Gupta should be vs how that should play with the expressicons?
-talk about the process of creating the expressicons too. How the weight and heaviness but smooth ease of the lines were intentionally created so they could “play nice” with the rest of the logo.
(BELOW) include close-up images of ways we wanted the letter and expressions to look differently (how to integrate the smile or design the eyes so that it looks alert but also friendly
Ritesh - with their signature hat and glassesSprouts - growth and happiness Peacock - culture, based on a tattoo Ritesh’s grandma has Sun - expressivenessDancing Human - signifying community and kindness
The impact:
-mention the applications of the logo (how the expressicons can replace certain letters (and were designed to take up the same amount of space).
- potentially include examples of the logo in action. Biz card? throughout a website? as social media frames? as conference collatoral?