— CASE STUDY

Dance with Jasmina

— ROLE

Art Direction

Graphic Design

Branding

This logo presented unique challenges. The client provided a brief, which included images of her dance poses, hand-drawn concept sketches, and early drafts. My main task was crafting a dance logo symbolizing movement that catered to various dance forms – from belly dancing and street dance to salsa, bachata, and zumba. The client’s desire to incorporate a silhouette posed an intriguing dilemma: how could I convey the essence of dance without leaning into a specific style? While ballet and flamenco dancers offer instantly recognizable silhouettes, the challenge was to derive something more universal.

In my exploration, I stumbled upon images of fighting fish; their vibrant, flowing tails mirrored flamenco dress movements in both color and form. This inspiration led to blending ideas of these natural movements with water splash dynamics, especially when rendering the dress and hand movements within the silhouette. The client’s preference for a circular boundary prompted me to employ large Japanese calligraphy brushes, creating a circle that resonated with the logo’s dynamic energy. To round off the design, I selected a typeface with hints of hip-hop and street dance, uniting all elements into a cohesive logotype and logomark.

While I curated a color palette for her brand, I always emphasize designing a primary black and white version of the logo for versatile applications like printing and laser engraving. The colored rendition can be applied where suitableThis logo had some interesting challenges. I had received a brief from the client with example images of her dancing poses, some hand drawn sketches of ideas and a few early draft of ideas.

The thing making this particularly interesting was creating a dance logo which symbolised movement, had impact and would work for several styles of dancing, from belly dancing, street dance to salsa, bachata and zumba. And wanting to include a silhouette this needed to express dance yet not be tied to any style. A ballet dancer or flamenco dancer have striking silhouettes easily perceived, so how could I transform this idea into something more generic? I started exploring different types of movement and colors, I found some images of these fighting fishes with big beautiful tails resembling the movements of flamenco dresses both in their striking colors as well as flowing movements.

Based on this I combined the ideas from these movements and the thought of the movement of water splashes which I used to transform the movement of the dress and hands in the silhouette. The client wished to have some sort of circle around the symbol, here I used Japanese large calligraphy brushes to create a circle where the brush would leave the same type of indication of movement. And finally I chose a typeface tying to hiphop and street dance to bring all the ideas into one logotype and logomark encompassing all the ideas.

I created a color palette for her brand, however I always try to make the logo in a black and white version so that it can be easily used for print, laser engraving etc. And then when appropriate it can be used with color.