Summary
Linares is a city with long history and a rich past. This new identity emphasizes how important those past times were for making the place grow and thrive, showing past values that are still present to this day in the monuments and buildings of interest.The objective of this redesign is giving the city a new image, proving its present and future value, uniting the graphics that represent the city in the same way that the citizens are aligning themselves with each other with the purpose of giving life back into this crippled but fighting community.
Investigation
The documentation started with a historic aproach on the city, from it's start as an cartago-iberian urbe home of Himilce, wife of the Carthaginnian general Hannibal, to its further rise as one of the most important european and even worldwide mining spots in the 19th century. That golden age for the city made a great impact on immigration, expansion and overall improvement of the location, including the construction of many remarkable buildings. Buildings, people of interest and other events that define the city are taken in mind. The branding at the time consisted on a logo for the town hall and a completely different version on the tourist places, which was outdated and did not manage to make the habitants represented.
Personally, as my hometown, I felt the need to make a statement about the city and how it feels:
In this age, the place has lost much of it's shine due to unemployement and other negative affairs, which has caused it's general view to be far from appealing. I was born and raised here and for too long I also agreed with these statements. It was not until I spent some years studying in Madrid, where I missed the feel of the place, when I realized something. It's not the city by itself but the people, their warmth, the will to fight and look for what they want independently of the difficulties they might find. It is thanks to local innitiatives that the city is trying to recover the life quality it used to have, and that is really valuable. Seeing people give what they can for the come back of our village, made me try to do the same in my field. A new face for the city would symbolize a new beginning, and it is a nice way to show the talent of the people, the warmth of the streets, the richness of the culture and the depth of it's history.
Creative process
During the investigation, some old postcards of it's golden age were found. In them, the name of the city appeared with different small variations. This was adapted as a logotype, paired with elements found in the streets, the pavement, benchs or other interesting patterns that are part of the habitant's visual memory of the place. The logo mark was taken from the city shield of arms, which has existed since 1577 and is present in many places of the town, ensuring that the citizens will already have this symbol embedded in their memories even before they see it. These two elements are finished with the presence of a brand slogan consisting on the word "magnética", meaning magnetic, playing with the fact that it is so appealing that it attracts you to it, and having other meanings:
- Looks back to the town's roman history with the prefix magn-
- Is related to metals found in the mines
- Also related to materials for technological gadgets, which refers to the towns university studies.
The colors are a washed black anda lighter shade of linarite blue, which is a symbolic color for the town, coming from a mineral that was found and named here and since has been part of the city. Fonts used are Ofelia text for text applications and a monospace font called Space mono (used on the slogan as well) for headlines due to it's interesting almost historical but at the same time contemporary look. Graphic resources are built representing the different buildings and monuments present in the city, playing further with the idea of bringing forward the elements already present in the citizen's minds, playing with both brand colors. Finally for complementing it a little more, some signage icons are created.
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Project showcase
