Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to warp time? If you could speed things up a little bit, or make time crawl at a snail’s pace?
Hip Hop artist Sean Blake HTF is a self-taught rapper and producer. One of the unique ways he incorporates samples into his music is by drastically manipulating their speed and duration. His process involves finding a moment in a song that resonates with him, an otherwise ephemeral split-second, which he then draws out, stretching it like taffy.
This produces a whole series of unusual new sounds which are often moody and ethereal. They retain the essence of the original sample, yet are transformed into new musical elements which he uses like building blocks to create an entirely new body of music.
I sought out to create a logo that would simulate his process. I started with an input (the initials “SB”), and transformed them to create a distorted output.
First, I joined together the letters to treat them as a single element. Then I elongated the new shape.
To create the effect of distortion and transformation reminiscent of his music, I printed out the shape and warped it manually by bending the printed piece of paper. I then created a logo shape based on a photo I took of the bent paper.
It didn’t sit right, but I did like the way that the S and the B merged into each other. So I did some sketching on a grid, referenced the interaction between the letters, and created a geometric-based design. It was much more successful.
I used the distortion not only as a way to relate the logo to the music, but also to increase legibility in the shape.
