Wow, it sure has been a while since I updated this blog. My apologies, but I’ll try to update more regularly now that I’m pretty settled into my new job at YouTube and can start doing freelance work again.
When John Green asked me to design a “This Machine Kills Fascists” laptop decal, I of course said yes. John didn’t give much design direction (besides not making it look like Woody Guthrie’s guitar), so I tried out several different typographic styles before we settled on the final one.
I thought the typography treatment in this concept was interesting, but as it took up the entire front of the laptop, it wouldn’t have been very flexible for different sized computers.
I had fun playing with depth and unreadability, but ultimately this design probably wouldn’t have worked very well as a decal.
Speaking of unreadability, I liked the idea of abstracting the letterforms so much that they just look like an abstract pattern until you really try to decipher it and realize what it says.
I did a couple different concepts using warning labels, which was the idea we ended up going with.
It figures that after doing all these explorations, the one that ended up being produced was the first one I designed, which had taken all of 20 minutes to make. However, I think its success really comes from the simplicity. It is understated and small enough to be usable on laptops of any size or color, and it gets the message across without feeling too self-important.
It made me so happy to see that Wil Wheaton had reblogged the decal on Tumblr. I wonder if he bought one!
This laptop decal can be ordered from DFTBA in either black or white. I hope you guys like it!
