I was asked to design a logo for the Amateurist Network, a collective that exists 'somewhere between a support system and a learning network.' I was thinking about the idea of the amateur in design: I used the typeface Arial, a default system typeface that is considered by many professional designers to be a poor imitation of Helvetica, and based the logo's shape on A4 paper proportions, a reference to desktop publishing.
Despite the Amateurist Network's collective roots, they were keen to explore a branding and identity that could be perceived as corporate (although my early versions were rejected for being too close to the logo of American Apparel). I enjoy the tension generated by the skewed corporate Modernist logo and the egalitarian aims of the collective though, on reflection, the collective's aims and the utopian ideals of Modernism are not that far apart.