Daniel Giangrandi is a designer who we have hired a few times to create branding for gallery shows, Instagram features and some pages on our website. He is full of creative ideas and we are so happy that we got to work with him again on Off Topic. We thought that the community would be interested in getting to know him a bit more and to understand his creative process for the project.
Website banner design
PL: What do you like about design?
Daniel: I’ve always been someone intrigued with visuals / graphics / icons and how they can accompany to represent something and wanted to be someone who created those things as well. design has always been the glue that holds together and pushes all my creative endeavors and since it’s the center of it all and a practice of how I think and visualize things I decided that was what I should go to school for and take to the next level as that, in theory, would benefit all the other things I do as well whereas only focusing on one of them would only further that. Design is beautiful. Design is everywhere. Design is everything. It’s kinda nuts.
Front of postcard
Back of postcard
PL: What inspired you about the title and intention of this show to make you want to create the brand identity for it?
Daniel: I really liked the title of Off Topic to represent the story behind this show and really wanted to create something in the spirit of the newspaper that unites all of them but in a contemporary and appealing way. I wanted it to be fun and simple but something worthy of how awesome of an idea for a show this is. With its newspaper background, I'm glad it evolved into something that acknowledged its roots but gave it a new look like this.
Sold poster design
PL: How did you start creating the branding for Off Topic?
Daniel: I was originally fixated on figuring out a nice way of emphasizing the large amount of artists involved for the poster graphic and during the process of making graphics for that idea, one of them sparked a fantastic correlation that the line connecting Off and Topic could represent Broad Street and in the circle in the middle could be 400 N Broad (used to be the Inquirers HQ). The lines beaming out of it, to me, represent how information spreads from that point with it being HQ outwards into the world. Those lines were originally connecting each of the artists' which also looked cool.
Introductory poster in gallery
PL: What were some challenges you faced while designing this brand identity?
Daniel: I wanted to try and make the ink bleeds for the words deeper but when trying to replicate the specific look, my threshold tool in Photoshop just was not doing what it needed to do to make that happen, so I had to abandon that idea and try something else.
Initial design idea
Initial design idea
Initial design idea
PL: What do you like most about the design you created for Off Topic?
Daniel: It’s quiet but loud at the same time. (to elaborate: I originally made the ideas colorful using some of my personal film grains to create colorful gradients but the one option that was black and white/gray gave off the newspaper feel and we immediately ran with it. Didn’t need the colors to be just as appealing as the colors in it).
Printed sticker design
Printed sticker design
PL: Since these designs are printed and not only featured online, what are some things you needed to consider and keep in mind while designing?
Daniel: Time to switch to CMYK for some files! haha. Colors get a little complicated when it comes to printing so for this to be minimal on colors and mainly a grayscale color palette, it will be pretty accurate with its printed result and I'm excited to see it in person :)
Pin designs