Visual Language - by Chris McCarvill

I am a musician, but I’m also an artist, more of a graphic designer really. That means I don’t do lots of emotional expressing with art. I’m good at creating visual languages for customers, or myself. Let me explain what that means.

In practical terms, Say there’s a car you like and you want a laptop styled like it. You’d go to me for that. Or, say you found a font or letter style that you really like, but you only have one letter of it, and you want your logo to all look like that letter. I’m good at looking at that letter and finding all the little idiosyncrasies that make it different from other fonts, and then using the set of rules dictated by the idiosyncrasies I can create a whole alphabet just from one letter.

For some reason I seem to pick up the visual language of things very quickly. It’s especially interesting when I have the tiniest fragment to go on, or say the influence is from the feel of a piece of music. I can listen to a song and draw you something that looks more often than not that it was born of that world.

This also ties into the curious internet pastime of coolhunting. I have to say this intrests me as well. Ever look at zappos.com ? They have lots of shoes. Try narrowing down your search to find two or three pairs that really suit your personality. Now take the set of rules dictated by the style of those shoes and apply it to something else. Imagine designing furniture based on those rules. Art is fun that way.

It can also be distracting. Because I see this language all around me, it’s hard to not look at things that way. That means for the most part, nothing is really what it seems. A light fixture in Munich, Germany was made out of carefully sliced concrete rubble and clean, green edged glass. There’s a brilliant mind behind that object, just to see the art in a bunch of rubble. But those rules could apply to interior or exterior design, Like maybe you’d want to make a matching glass topped table out of laser cutting an old car up. Or cutting up discarded fabrics interspersed with something sleek to create a totally new look for a dress. It’s truly endless once you head down this path.

Nature is a huge source for color palettes as well. I’m addicted to finding intriguing color combinations. I’m writing this in March, and I’m in Connecticut, which means that Spring is not quite here, the rocks are wet and dark, the leaves are dead and rust brown. The sky can go from navy blue to slate grey to white at any moment. It may seem oppressive to some, but design a website using those same colors and watch it fit together flawlessly. Or look at one flower in the summer and you have a whole other color palette useful for designing anything bold and energetic, like a pair of sneakers from zappos.com. Nature is great that way.

Sometimes I’ll look at a magazine of a subject I know very little about, skim through it, absorb the graphic elements, the compositions, the colors, and then design a logo using those rules. You don’t even have to buy the magazine to do this. I designed a car one time using the rules of a downhill ski boot. Believe me, it’s really cool.

A particular challenge was one I set for myself. I like high-end, specific mountain bike gear and clothing. I wanted to be able to design my own clothing, and logos, really an imaginary corporate identity that would have the same gravity as a leading manufacturer. So, off to the bike store I went, not to buy a bike or look at the clothes on the shelves, but to look at the employees. What did they wear and ride? They’re privy to the coolest of the cool stuff coming out, so I started there. I noticed their T shirts had a different look than the ones on the shelf, maybe a crisper additional logo or a slightly better cut that made it different from the ones offered to the public. Mental notes taken for my own designs...

This of course goes for any sporting event. The jerseys the actual team wears are never the same as the ones offered for sale to the public. I’m interested in those differences. Usually the team’s gear are the BEST a company has to offer. The general public generally gets a cheaper version simply because the best is expensive, and it’s usually overbuilt for everyday use.

In car design, this phenomenon is called a “halo vehicle”. It’s when a manufacturer jams every great, creative, cutting edge design they can into one special vehicle and that vehicle influences the rest of the line in different ways for the next few years.

I seek out the “halo vehicle” in any subject, be it science, music or really anything. I like studying the best people have to offer. The internet is such a great tool for that. Wikipedia and ted.com are favorites of mine.

By nature, a company that competes on price is a commodity, by contrast, a company that competes by offering a premium product or service is a brand. I’m interested in branding. Some brands go as far as to represent a certain lifestyle, take for example Oakley (who I've had a strange obsession with since I was young). They make neat, high end technical, well...stuff. It’s not like you can’t go to the corner store and buy a pair of 3 dollar sunglasses. If you go and spend $150 on a pair of Oakleys (which I’ve done once in my life - and I was 16...) you really feel like you’re joining a tribe of like minded adventure people. That’s successful branding. Being able for an average person to recognize a product of a certain brand takes an understanding of visual language.

It’s my job to to create this vibe or language for other people or myself. Look at this website. What’s the language? I tried to make it slightly mysterious, yet colorful and interesting. Something a little out of the ordinary (for a musician site) that you might like to come back and revisit from time to time. Maybe it makes you ask what things are, or at least want to look beyond the surface. It’s manyl of my visual influences, nature, technology, the juxtaposition of the two. This is what I see when I listen to music I like and my own music. This site is a little gateway to what’s visually going on in my head. Are you sleeping yet? hahaha.

Chris McCarvill sunglasses? Probably not. But I could design them...