The Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies has a new logo, created by Chicago-based graphic designer and curator Ashley Renée King. What better way to introduce our new look than an interview with the designer about their creative process!
How do you define yourself and your creative process?
AK: I would define myself as a human that enjoys bringing ideas to life through experiences. I often think about my design process as a beautiful collaboration between minds. I feel we are all professionals at experiencing, so I value getting to know what my collaborators have appreciated experiencing and what they think about. I don't consider myself a good oral communicator because I often get very anxious and hyperactive when speaking—yet, I consider myself a wonderful listener. I appreciate catching every single word someone says, reflecting on its meaning, the ambiance around its tone, and then translating it to the best of my current abilities into an experience. As I examine the project's ethos, I begin translating it into key words, statements, and themes, which can be a beautiful challenge because every word is dynamic and holds depth. I then correspond them with its closest visual companion and synthesize my translations, all becoming a whole graphic experience. The design translation works as a sort of visual essay for folks to interpret. Just as you experience the visual sentence that comes with witnessing an arrow communicating "..this way.." I, too, enjoy speaking in that language— symbols!
What did it mean for you to redesign our logo and branding package?
AK: For me, redesigning the GWSS department logo and branding meant having the honor to be invited to share my visual translation skills to establish a new era in communicating the department ethos- especially through a principal visual such as the main symbol— the physique of the idea. Such a pleasure!
In what ways is your design process informed by the things the GWSS department is invested in?
AK: I spent a long time learning about the department, contemplating the words its faculty use to communicate themselves contextually and what they shared with me along the process. I feel the logo's anatomy reflects the department's ethos formally—first, conceptualizing an icon that seeks to visually represent what GWSS describes as their foundation, "drawing on feminist thought to foreground transformative intersectional and transnational analyses of social formations;" then, pushing further to embrace the globality of the department. The icon itself is then encircled by the department's title, the leading contextual words, to communicate that this is what the department encompasses. I feel the process was informed in totality by what the department is invested in and became stronger in its reflection of the department's ethos as we refined the design.