M2 // Project #1
Chace Levi Worldwide
Adventures in Post-modernism
M2 // CLWW
Chace Levi Worldwide
Inspiration
Chase Levi Worldwide (i.e. CLWW) is a multi-purpose website revolving around servicing audio production. It concentrated on three areas – recording production, equipment repair, and custom woodworked environmental audio baffles. The CLWW website would also work in tandem with a podcast about audio called Live in the House, a podcast that focused on local musicians and engineers and their stories about the industry. The podcast would be supported by a variety of homemade salsas.
Scope
The System (or TH3 SY5T3M) was designed to be a visually schizophrenic open-ended coffee table book, utilizing my own personal experimentation with post-modern typography. The book itself is hand-bound using a technique proposed in The Vignelli Canon and incorporates personal artwork including macro photography [cover image] and the use of layered transparency effects.
M2 // CLWW
Website
Editorial Design
I have always been fascinated with true stories of government espionage, techniques in tradecraft and modern U.S. military surveillance capabilities. This particular subject has always seemed to endlessly captivate me. This project, The System, was created with the love of this subject in mind and was directly inspired by Laura Poitras’s 2014 documentary, Citizen Four, which was based on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It covers a wide array publicly known surveillance programs exposed in the wake of the Snowden leaks.
1280 x 720 / CLWW
M2 // CLWW
Identity
Crafting the Visual Feel
Color Scheme
- HEX - #303030
- HEX - #1079ea
- HEX - #23a3dc
- HEX - #e0e0e0
- HEX - #ffffff
Typography
CLWW uses Lato. (weights: 100, 400, 600, 800) Lato works well small and is freely available for web and Print. Post project ease of availability (Google Fonts) was a consideration for choosing the typeface for ease of use in the future for the client.
M2 // CLWW
Website
Editorial Design
Live in the House was a podcast where the owner would interview musicians and audio production crew and get the inside scoop and stories. To unify the visual style of the website and social media channels I designed a thumbnail. The thumbnails were designed with ease of use in mind and quick turnover. A template was created where all the user had to do was down the image of their guest in layer, change some text and export the image. All effects and styles are automatically applied.
1920 x 1080
M2 // CLWW
Thumbnails
Inspiration
The Kyle Coopers title sequence to Seven heavily inspired the overall direction of the System. Watching it I noticed that the book being created used different types of semi opaque paper like vellum and, if you watch closely, seemed to use printed transparencies. I decided that using transparency for the title page would make quite an impression on the viewer. The viewer is greeted with a field of random letters but by turning the page subtracts the useless data and reveals the hidden message within the code.
1920 x 1080
M2 // CLWW
Logo
Three Services
While CLWW is concentrated on audio, the owner did not want a logo that relied on the usual audio troupes like meters or wave forms. Being that CLWW focused on three primary areas (recording production, equipment repair, and custom audio environmental baffles) I introduced the idea of three overlapping services represented by three overlapping circles. The idea came from RGB colorspace overlays. Instead of a flat overlap, I instead choose a monospaced stroke with spacing to help reinforce the idea of the overlapping areas.
Primary
Alternate
Prime Invert
Alt Invert
M2 // CLWW
Usage
Inspiration
During this time I became oddly interested in phone photography and experimented with a cheap Iphone macro lens I found at Frys. I was pleasantly surprised at just how well it worked. The image, a slightly curled one-hundred dollar bill, allowed me to use the lens depth of field to emphasize Benjamin Franklin’s eyes. The image is vertically cropped tightly to give the impression of Ben, symbol of the government, peeking in on the viewer.
11×17. 1/16 bleed. 300 dpi.
