BARRIO LOGAN NEIGHBORHOOD BRAND IDENTITY
For a school assignment, I was tasked with building an updated brand identity for a local San Diego neighborhood: Barrio Logan. I created a logo, a visual vocabulary, billboards, a lamp post design, a brochure, and souvenir designs.
Through my research, I learned that Barrio Logan has a history of displacement and struggle, and is now becoming intensely gentrified. It is predominantly made up of Chicano/Mexican Americans with indigenous roots. It was important for me not to overpower the brand identity with the commodification of the neighborhood culture for enjoyment and consumption. Instead, I attempted to highlight its beautiful and vibrant culture.
SKILLS:
- Logo ideation and execution
- Typeface creation
- Billboard, lamp post, brochure, and souvenir designs
- Implementation of research into a conscious intention behind designs
- Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Drawing inspiration from Native American and Mexican Aztec symbols, I created numerous iterations of each letter until I reached a simplified yet powerful end product. I transferred my sketches into Adobe Illustrator to create them into vectorized entities to experiment with the color palette. I chose bright colors to reflect the traditional vibrancy of the cultures that live in this neighborhood and further celebrate and announce their presence amongst the apparent gentrification.
For this billboard, I drew inspiration from traditional Mexican Folklorico dresses that are often bright and colorful, and they flow as the performers dance. The painting on the right is a work painted in Chicano Park, located underneath a freeway interchange, where there is a large collection of outdoor murals that depict historical events, Chicano culture, and mythology. I created the textured surface in Photoshop to allude to the painterly quality of the murals that sit on concrete.
