This week, I got a message from my friend RJ Dimla (School of Humanities Sanggunian Chair) asking me to recolor the logo that I made last year. Though I didn’t have much time to do things on the side, I tried my best to make time for it since apparently the Dean was waiting.
Since I was already at it, I used the opportunity to refine the logo and improve it. It’s been more than a year since I made the logo and I had a few things in mind like removing some unnecessary details and checking the spatial relations of some elements.
The recoloring wasn’t really hard since I was given Sanggunian’s branding manual which indicated the exact colors and variations that had to be used. Although I find the new colors odd, I have no choice but to conform for the sake of consistency. That is the essence of branding after all.
This very brief activity brought to me the idea that design is truly a recurring activity. You never end at exporting a poster and naming it “poster-final.ai”. It’s a cycle that yearns for a deeper understanding of how it can become more appropriate for its purpose (or target audience).
Come to think of it, there’s a sense of humility that comes with this kind of cycle — that not everything is achieved perfectly at the first trial. Design then is a process that requires perseverance to get the best output on the first try while possessing patience and baring acceptance of the fact that the product of the first trial might be the worst version of your work. And that even if the first trial is trash, it still contributes to the totality of future versions to come. Every version is a fraction of the ideal outcome.