SXTXState Web Editor - Spring 2018
SXTXState is a grad student-run multimedia reporting project covering SXSW Interactive. I was selected as part of the 2018 team and will work with two other students to maintain the website, sxtxstate.com.
The site, built on Wordpress, and respective logos are redesigned every year. This year's design returns to traditional Texas State University colors by utilizing maroon and gold. The logo features Helvetica of varying weights with "invisible" Xs creating negative space over the two Xs in SXTX. This creates an HTML-style tag for the logo's T to emphasize the digital aspect of the project, it's students and the innovative conference the project covers.
The process of developing and editing the logo redesign can be seen below.
Preliminary logo design
The web team decided to move in a more minimalist and streamlined design for the 2018 SXTXState logo, and the website would follow the logo's aesthetic. Early designs experimented with font weight, italics and the use of a simple star shape, which has been used in years prior.
While these inital designs were generally well received, they seemed too minimal, and further versions were explored.
Previous SXTXState teams have drawn on the design of SXSW's logo and each respective year's color scheme in the design of their logos. 2018's team was not inspired, however, by this year's color scheme but did find inspiration in the SXSW logo.
Second logo design
The team began experimenting with incorporating SXSW's arrow-style logo in the SXTXState logo, and we were naturally drawn to the Xs. Using copies of the Xs with black strokes and white fills to add dimension to the logo came first, and angular shapes were created in the first part of the logo.
What revealed itself was what appears to be an opening angle bracket ahead of the T and a closing angle bracket following it, thus creating an HTML tag. The stroke was removed from the white Xs to allow negative space to create the tag from the Xs and T, and an additional color was tested inside the tag.
The colored tag was dropped, and the final logo was chosen. The logos go live on social media and the site will be finalized by Feb. 5.