When my good friend Alexander asked me to create a logo for up and coming reggaeband “Institutionen”I never expected I would need to consult with my black metal friends about it. The sketch the band sent me made me look both once and twice. Loved it! This was somewhat out of my comfortzone even though I’ve been beating around the world of black metal logos before. Of course I said I’ll give it a try.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt while trying to figure out the world of black metal over beers, it is that there is symetry in all the chaos. I tried to trace over the sketch the band sent me but I felt it was still lacking some order. So I took the basic shape with me to the drawingboard, and came up with this sketch.

Now that the logo was somewhat more symetrical I begun the work in Illustrator. At the same time I had my good friend Mikael on the horn who was kind enough to give me pointers in realtime. Luxury!

This was the first draft I sent of for review and a day later the feedback arrived.

The band asked for a more cracked, handdrawn and asymetrical look so I went back into Illustrator and added more anchorpoints and randomly messed the logo up. Mikael dropped me a line about adding some roots to the final design, and I think it really helped to convey a somewhat more organic feel to it. Here it is!

This was a really fun project to work with and I’m really happy about the turnout. I can’t wait to see this printed on black T-shirts! Institutionen will be out playing gigs this summer. Check out their music here.