"unprinted" is an online magazine that offers content to make the daily lives of digital designers more enjoyable. I was involved in the project from the initial stage and was in charge of a series of designs, from the visual identity to the site design.
What is needed in the site so that digital designers find it enjoyable? I thought it would be "a sense of fun" and proposed it as the design concept. I wanted to create a site that would allow visitors to evoke the joy of designing by adding a sense of fun to the principles of digital design, which prioritize objectivity, cleanliness, and readability.
"Design with a sense of fun," which I say here is the following.
A "familiar" design coming with a twist
It means things we have seen before but contain something witty. I thought that "a sense of fun" is something we relate to and find fun to imagine.
I designed the symbol mark with the "un" of "unprinted" as if roughly drawn with the path tool or digital pen used in design work. For the logotype, I used the humanist sans-serif typeface "Myriad," which has excellent readability and a human touch. I wanted to create a logo that digital designers could relate to, and I aimed for a design with these images of "freedom to imagine" and "connection."
To make the symbol mark function as a graphic element, I adopted the method of dynamic identities, which allows it to change according to the conveyed message.
One of the critical points in defining the color palette was to match the colors of the natural world.
The brand color "Cyan" portrays a warm and bright blue that evokes the sky. Blue is a standard brand color for many services because of its image of intelligence, trust, and security. It is often used in vivid tones that lean toward purple for visibility, especially in the digital realm. The blue used by unprinted is "Cyan," which leans toward the yellowish blue found in nature, and the saturation has been adjusted to soften.
With "Cyan" as the key color, I defined the site's brand colors and created the color palette for graphic assets.
Brand colors
Color palette
I proposed applying two graphic rules to represent "design with a sense of fun."
One is to use geometric shapes represented by ◯△□. With their simple and regular nature, these basic shapes are "familiar," as the building blocks we played with as children, and there is room for freedom.
The other is to use lines of uniform thickness, such as those drawn with the Path tool. It is a familiar drawing style for digital designers. They would relate to it as if they were participating in the creation process by making it easy to imagine how to draw.
