The Crest of Visualization
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, Comment or Ping
Donnie Jeter
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.
Mar 11th, 2005
Colin D. Devroe
In my opinion, very cool.
Mar 11th, 2005
gpshewan
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…
Mar 11th, 2005
Rob Mientjes
Really nice, Erik. Hadn’t looked at it too intensely (ducks), good thing you point it out :)
Mar 11th, 2005
Greg
Very nice. Makes me think of the Chronicles of Narnia for some reason.
Mar 11th, 2005
Chad
Very cool. With every visit to this site, it just keeps looking better and better. Keep it up man!
Mar 11th, 2005
lord erik of kartooner
Thanks everyone. Your feedback is gold to me.
Mar 12th, 2005
Max
It looks like something out of a Zelda/Nintendo game; very retro and quaint! I love it!
Mar 12th, 2005
Matt Burris
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.
Mar 12th, 2005
Indranil
And now, from Creative County, the knight of creativity, I giveth ye, Sir Erik.
*Trumpets!!!*
Mar 13th, 2005
Dad
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
Mar 13th, 2005
Mike
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.
Mar 13th, 2005
Simon Jessey
I always thought “Crest” was a toothpaste? Seriously though, I like the way your redesign is going, Erik.
Mar 14th, 2005
kartooner
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.
Mar 14th, 2005
markku
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.
Mar 15th, 2005
Mike
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.
Mar 15th, 2005
kartooner
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.
Mar 15th, 2005
Adam Michela
That crest is kick-ass! Trademark it.
Mar 16th, 2005
kartooner
Thanks man, I’ll look into it, so long as I don’t have to sell my first born. :)
Mar 17th, 2005
Jarek Pi?rkowski
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.
Mar 20th, 2005
kartooner
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.
Mar 21st, 2005
Simon
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! :P
Jul 4th, 2005
some guy
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.
Jul 25th, 2005
kartooner
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. :)
Jul 26th, 2005
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