Creating a logo in a week for the program that you are enrolled in is a bit of a daunting task. And if anything, the fact that the program in question is  ITP  only makes the task that much harder. I mean, come on…I have trouble defining ITP myself. Our full name (Interactive Telecommunications Program) doesn’t provide any sort of hint at the stuff that we actually do up on the 4th floor of Tisch. And though the official website describes ITP as “A Center for the Recently Possible”, that doesn’t really translate into an explanatory definition, let alone a centralized idea for a logo.

So I spent a lot of time brainstorming.  Here are some of my failures, or the ideas that I ended up abandoning (all rough drafts, mind you). I should also mention that by the time I got to Illustrator I already had a notebook page full of sketches. I opted not to scan and upload that, so what you’re getting is just a small piece of the thought process:

This was where I started. I wanted to go for something that was reminiscent of building things from scratch, hence the wood-like design of the letters. But despite the ruggedness of building ideas,  I wanted the block letters to bring an official feel to things, since ITP is part of an academic research university, after all.

A sandpaper-rough draft of my thoughts around playing with “ITP”  in a lightbulb, to signify the creativity that is such a large part of ITP culture. I dismissed it pretty quickly as too literal. Plus, with all the issues around centricity that I brought up earlier, I thought it might be wise to stay away from an icon.

It was then that the “T” really started to bother me (just as our professor had warned us it might).  So I decided to explore the idea of something handwritten in a way that could possibly break down the issue with the T just chilling in the center, taking up emphasis:

I wasn’t completely satisfied, but I felt like I was on the right track.

You can see where the rest of the track led me:

And finally, a little smoothed out and in purple (NYU color) and black:

Note: this is still,as many of my 2D Design assignments are, a bit of a work in process. You can see how though all of the logos above are similar, I was still playing around with the “t” bar height and the drag on the “p” descender. The two on the bottom are a bit rougher.)

I ended up really liking the design. It’s simple, which I love, and it gets across  a feel for scrawling out ideas–like the brainstorming that leads to a creative moment. At the same time, the cursive really lets the “t” and “p” balance each other out and lends a little more substance and authority then it would have if it was a more full-bodied type of lettering.

It’s still a rough draft because I think it needs some smoothing and a bit more attention to detail, but it’s my logo design contribution for this little educational explorational endeavor that we’ve got going on here.

Well, that or this: