LIVING WITH XXY
A human-friendly logo for a Project on Klinefelter Syndrome Awareness
GOAL
For this project, I had to create a logo for Living with XXY, the life project of a dear friend, Ryan Bregante. His mission is to spread positivity and awareness around Klinefelter Syndrome, also known as 47xxy. In the United States alone, 1 in 400 boys are born with Klinefelter syndrome, 70% of which will never know during their lifetime. The other 30% still remain strongly under-informed about the implications of being born with an extra x chromosome, contributing to fear, stigmatization and a heavy emotional pressure for the individuals and their family's. For his prject, Ryan was looking to create a logo that could transmit the positivity, creativity and community associated to his movement so that he can help shift the awareness from negative to uplifting and empowering.
PROCESS
The creative process took a couple conversations and a small brainstorming session to identify the message Ryan wanted to convey with his logo, something that would visually represent his work to educate and empower a worldwide community of people with Klinefelter Syndrome. From our conversations, the main idea was for something that just catches the eye and isn’t over complicated. Something that people can see and be proud to share and represent.
Keywords for Living with XXY were: hope, desire, passion, positivity, likable, humble, genuine, defies descriptions. For the color, the initial brief was to explore light blue as well as different hues of blue, related to his personal story.
On the visual side, my inspiration came from the double helix DNA, which I started rendering in stylized ways in my initial sketches. The direction seemed promising, so I created a few iterations based on this concept. At this point what was missing was the human aspect of XXY, which was my challenge to represent visually.
OUTPUT
After a couple iterations based on the DNA visual inspiration, I incorporated Ryan's feedback on creating something that could be like a stamp, a mark, something that could be used to identify this group in a positive and proud way.
The final output added the stamp concept to a humanized version of XXY. In the logo, the DNA shaped letters can also be seen as people with their arms up in the air, and uplifting, empowered position of joy and positivity. A rough texture was added to the logo to create a weathered, bold and outdoorsy look and feel. Living with XXY means to be proud, to stand up and go out in the world, be adventurous, creative, genuine, just like Ryan.
The final choice went for the light blue variation, without any inclination. The logo is now used on Living with XXY's website and social media, and has become the symbol of community and empowerment for the people with Klinefelter Syndrome and their families. It was a pleasure to collaborate to an amazing project of this kind, best satisfaction in ages!
The logo is property and copyright of Ryan Bregante 2018.