» www.bryssis.com

Aside from design, I have also been involved with music for over a dozen years. In 1996, I picked up an old acoustic guitar and started teaching myself. 1997, I bought my first electric guitar (Fender Stratocaster). Having grown up in the 90′s, the majority of my influences and favorite bands involved the likes of Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. In 2003 I started to break out more into ambient and electronic music and purchased a Roland studio keyboard. Eventually, I decided to go back to my guitar roots and began Bryssis (“bree-sis“) in 2010. My inspirations now stemmed from bands such as A Perfect Circle, Ashes Divide, Type O Negative and The Cure.

While I’ve had numerous personal music projects over the years, their logos were nothing more than the project name in a font that fit the sound and atmosphere of the music in some way. With Bryssis, I thought to challenge myself a bit and develop my own typographic logo.

The name Bryssis was inspired by a former friend of mine, whose last name was Vrissis. From what she told me and from some research, I found this to generally mean “water fountain” in Greek, stemming from the word “brysi” (fountain). I changed the spelling a bit to form something a bit more unique. I thought it made a great name for a band, with the definition implying some kind of catharsis or new beginning.

Logo concepts (click for full-size)

I started to sketch out some rough ideas while at the bar. I wanted to create something that was perhaps interpretive, without exhibiting any cliches of typical genre typographic logos (i.e. metal being hard-edged). I also thought something interesting could be done with the two S’s in some way, but I wanted it all legible.

Final concept (click for full-size)

Somehow, the stem of the R and the Y seemed to have an interesting aesthetic together, so I extended them. Off to work in Illustrator…

Beginning vector work in Illustrator (click for full-size)

The curves of the S’s was challenging to get just right, so I started to experiment with other shapes. The final S character design looked much more consistent and still easily read.

Final logo in black-and-white (click for full-size)

For the website and other materials, I gave the logo a radiating, blue glow appearance which tied in with the color of water (thinking back to a metaphorical rebirth or cleansing). At the end of this project I came away quite happy and proud for not just sticking to picking a font, but developing an actual brand for the band that no one else has.

Stop by www.bryssis.com and checkout some demos, or “Like” us on Facebook!

Colored logo