The Crest of Visualization
March 11, 2005
One of the most important pieces of the kartooner redesign is the addition of a medievil crest. A few people have emailed me about the crest image which serves as part of the kartooner.com logo and instead of emailing everyone individually with the same answer I’ve decided to explain how the crest came to be and what it means to me as an artist and visionary.
For starters, Wikipedia defines a crest as being:
[…] a component of a coat of arms. It is a figure (or group of figures), often but not always a beast of some kind, depicted atop the helmet placed above the shield. The crest has been traditionally used by men only, with the exception of queens of England or Britain, who have been treated heraldically as men. Some armigers used their crest as a personal badge, which led to the erroneous use of the word “crest” to describe a shield or full coat of arms.
The crest adorning the header of this site was inspired in part by a crest I had seen on a cover of an old book. The original images on the cover were simple pictographs resembling medieval scenery, including an image of a joust and a plate full of grapes. When I began the initial sketch, I decided to use four components that make up the core of my creativity and these include:
Truthfully I could have gone a lot deeper as far as the imagery is concerned, but my goal was to keep it simple and allow the image to convey itself without complicated explanation. Furthermore, my imagination combined with pencils, paper and ink allow for unlimited exploration and creation. Inspiration is everywhere you look and for me, no matter where I am or what I’m focusing on it’s just a matter of pulling out my sketchpad and capturing that moment on paper.
24 comments
I think it’s incredibly unique. It’s nice to see some originality in design. It seems today everyone is so worried about doing things by the book. In my opinion this is a design risk that paid off. Hats off to you my friend, I love the new look.
by Donnie Jeter on March 11, 2005 at 1:10 pm. #
In my opinion, very cool.
by Colin D. Devroe on March 11, 2005 at 1:11 pm. #
I like the whole site design right now. Easy on the eyes and — more importantly — doesn’t remind me of a million other sites.
The crest! Interesting idea. As long as you don’t start calling yourself Lord Erik of Kartooner…
by gpshewan on March 11, 2005 at 1:54 pm. #
Really nice, Erik. Hadn’t looked at it too intensely (ducks), good thing you point it out
by Rob Mientjes on March 11, 2005 at 3:14 pm. #
Very nice. Makes me think of the Chronicles of Narnia for some reason.
by Greg on March 11, 2005 at 3:26 pm. #
Very cool. With every visit to this site, it just keeps looking better and better. Keep it up man!
by Chad on March 11, 2005 at 5:58 pm. #
Thanks everyone. Your feedback is gold to me.
by lord erik of kartooner on March 12, 2005 at 12:58 am. #
It looks like something out of a Zelda/Nintendo game; very retro and quaint! I love it!
by Max on March 12, 2005 at 1:03 pm. #
All hail Lord Erik, son of the Duke, who sired Karl The Brave and Larry The Stooge, who bested King Henry The XIVth in a game of craps.
by Matt Burris on March 12, 2005 at 1:22 pm. #
And now, from Creative County, the knight of creativity, I giveth ye, Sir Erik.
*Trumpets!!!*
by Indranil on March 13, 2005 at 1:19 am. #
Nice redesign Erik, and the crest is cool.
I’m proud of you and what your doing with your life…keep up the exceptional efforts
by Dad on March 13, 2005 at 12:29 pm. #
I really like the direction you’re going with this. The whitespace is very pleasing. The crest is unique and exceptional because it has meaning. It might be cool to give it more room above and below instead of having it cropped off.
I think I felt a spark of desire to do something with my site.
by Mike on March 13, 2005 at 11:05 pm. #
I always thought “Crest” was a toothpaste? Seriously though, I like the way your redesign is going, Erik.
by Simon Jessey on March 14, 2005 at 5:07 pm. #
Mike: It’s always good to hear when I psuedo-inspire someone. In this case I’m looking forward to the tweaking you’ll be doing to your site. Also, I might take that overlap idea into consideration, that is if I can figure out how to do it without breaking the layout. Anyone have any ideas? Email me.
Simon: I’m a “Colgate” guy myself.
Thanks for the compliment, it’s still a work in progress but at the very least I’m making more progress and having to do less work. My deadline is May 1st and I’m banking on the fact that I’ll have some spare time to meet that goal.
by kartooner on March 14, 2005 at 5:32 pm. #
The medieval crest is quite unique, and I think it works well for you. I agree with max, it has a zelda-esque flavor to it.
by markku on March 15, 2005 at 1:16 am. #
I’ll start by posting something. Baby steps for me, please.
I was checking out your CSS and it looks to be pretty flexible to me. #branding, aka the crest header does not have another container other than body so it should be as simple as editing the graphic’s height, and changing the #branding hight attribute.
Another option would be to just scale down the crest a bit. But that might be against company policy, so I never said it.
by Mike on March 15, 2005 at 10:34 am. #
Mike: That I understand, but what I’d like to shoot for is to overlap the graphic on the biege ‘informational’ bar above the #branding div and below the #branding div, so that the tip of the shield isn’t cut off.
Although, in some regards I like how it’s cutoff because it gives it character. Scaling it down would mean sacrificing detail and while I considered that at one point I decided against it because I’d rather have the details show.
by kartooner on March 15, 2005 at 11:33 am. #
That crest is kick-ass! Trademark it.
by Adam Michela on March 16, 2005 at 2:03 am. #
Thanks man, I’ll look into it, so long as I don’t have to sell my first born.
by kartooner on March 17, 2005 at 9:45 am. #
Erm, I hate to be picky, but it’s just bigger than me.
It’s spelled medieval.
C’mon, I’m not the native speaker around here.
On topic of the crest, for some insane reason I keep on seeing a weirdo animal with huge teeth in the middle of the top. As in, the lighter, striped part that overlaps the pencil and the paper is the teeth, and the part above it, with the wiggly lines, is the nose. Actually, it took me a while to realize that you did not intend to have an animal there.
And now, for something completely different, I’ll be adding the reading links back to unthinkable momentarily.
by Jarek Pi?rkowski on March 20, 2005 at 5:24 am. #
Jarek: Point taken, you’re not the native speaker but I will admit that certain words are difficult to spell off the top of my head, medieval being one of them.
As for seeing an animal in the crest image, I think it’s interesting. I encourage personal observation and I’ll just say that whatever you see in the image is fine by me. On that same note, a friend of mine thinks it looks like the head of a dragon.
by kartooner on March 21, 2005 at 11:42 am. #
Erm, sorry Erik, but er, I seem to see a superheroine wannabe with long blonde hair, mid-sized boobs, a brown cape and a horrific face-mask perched on top of your shield trying to flex her tiny arms.
I’m serious! That was the first thing I saw!
by Simon on July 4, 2005 at 5:28 am. #
sigh.
“medieval” is a time period.
“medievil” is a video game.
this is almost as bad as people who spell “absolute” without the “e” on the end.
then again, ours is a generation of people raised on advertisements and television, maybe i shouldn’t set my standards so high.
by some guy on July 25, 2005 at 8:40 pm. #
Some Guy: While I appreciate your opinion, maybe next time you can refrain from anonymity when posting a thought, criticism or observation.
I understand that “medieval” is a time period, in fact I studied it in college. However, it’s just one of those words where the spelling is often difficult to remember. I know for a fact that you yourself, Some Guy, have misspelled a word and at that moment you might’ve been corrected, or not.
It’s also possible in this instance that I keep mixing up the spellings because I was a fan of the game of the same name, different spelling.
by kartooner on July 26, 2005 at 9:29 am. #