So, the time has come to talk about the process of redesigning my visual identity! This redesign has come with… a fair bit more reflection than the usual. I hit a peak with my mental health issues and had a severe breakdown recently.
Thanks to my friends, I was pulled out of the pit and able to keep putting the pieces together. Changed a number of small things in my life, unpacked some trauma, felt my soul get lighter.
Part of that peak I mentioned was some old destructive tendencies coming up and rearing their ugly heads again. These aren’t urges to harm myself or others physically, but an urge to tear down the things I’ve made digitally; completely restart online with nothing but the username and go again. It’s something I’ve done before a handful of times prior, not changing the username I used but just remaking the account.
Thanks again to my friends, I was able to resist that and begin a healthier process of examining the things I’ve built and thinking about how I can change them. Visual identity is a big thing for me, so that came first.
Fursona stays front and center, obviously. But, previous iterations of my design for the past few years had relied on condensed fonts and have relied on the “Blades” design rules I came up with, using these elements that cut across the screen at an 8 degree angle.
Condensed fonts feel safe for me to use; generally I like how they appear; big, bold, and flashy. They’ve been a favorite for a decade or more at this point. They’re space-efficient and make it easy to fit lots of bold elements into a more limited space.
Pushing out with some wider type lets me pursue bolder designs, but also requires more care and consideration with spacing out elements. The extra care made accommodating the elements I want trickier, but worthwhile to pursue. The end result is SO much cleaner.
Then, I wanted to ditch the “Blades” elements. I like the repetition of a central element. It draws attention easily, especially when you’re using bold colors like my fursona’s! But, those bold colors also mean I need to have background colors which enable high contrast without being overwhelming… tricky balance to strike, but I think that it works.
The “Echoes” on the typeface, and on the fursona were the end result of wanting those repeating elements, and not wanting to overwhelm. They’re stylish, draw the eye, and still manage to work within the existing color palette. It was a design that pushed me out of the comfort zone I’d been residing in, and still had some elements that were comfortable for me to work with too.
Some of the final touches came from my good friends WizardCM and Dillon; they’re folks I’ve collaborated with for a long time within the OBS Project. Their feedback was super useful and helped me a lot with tying some of the elements of the design together.
Pushing out like that was the real challenge for me. It’s hard for me to do new things, even watching new media, because of trauma I have related to that. It’s a lot of fear of extreme judgement. I wanted to break out of that safety with this, for reasons of… surpassing and breaking through that trauma. It’s a thing that seems so SILLY, so minor, and yet… trauma’s a bitch like that, ain’t it?
That’s the insight into the process for ya. This one was about pushing myself and working to overcome trauma. Not the typical design process, but you gotta work with what’s thrown at ya, huh?
Thanks for giving this a read, I really appreciate it. Let me know what you think on Twitter, and consider dropping a follow on Twitch too. My work on Twitch, as well as with the OBS Project, is supported by contributions on Ko-fi.
