Assignment

Sag Harbor is a historic whaling village on Long Island, New York. It is also the home of a new printing and book publishing company: Sag Harbor Press. The goal was to create a logo that firmly rooted the company in Sag Harbor’s iconic location, its rich nature and history, plus visually combine this with the owner’s passion for ink on paper, and old-timey printing.

Approach

Three elements I wanted to build the logo with were: whale, windmill and woodblock printing art.
• Whale: The first step was learning about whales: which types of whales live in the ocean off Long Island? Visits to whaling exhibits at the local libraries, image searches, sketching, watching videos of whale moves, more sketching.
• The windmill is a symbol of centuries of human settlement and industry. The windmill on the shore of Sag Harbor village is placed far away in the distance in the final composition, so the whale is shown swimming free and unthreatened.
• Borrowing from the printing arts; the visual languages of wood-cut medieval European printing blocks and Hokusai’s great wave, the logo is an ode to love of printing and ink on paper.

Results

The logo works successfully in large and small scale. The first books have been published and there are plans to expand into greeting cards and gift items for visitors to Sag Harbor, and the local qualities of the logo are a perfect fit.