Bass Coalition

The Bass Coalition is a summer workshop for Bass players and enthusiasts. One of their sponsors, NoTreble contacted me and asked if I could design a logo for the coalition. One of the biggest challenges that they mentioned was that it needed to appeal to both kinds of bass players, classical and electric. I was told that it could be edgy, but not too edgy. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I went to Google images and searched for “bass player” which brought up an array of images including someone playing a fish (humorous but not helpful). Rather than trying to jump the “two types of players” hurdle right away, I thought about music and how best to illustrate it. I saw a smooth flowing continuous line. I decided to create a logo of a classic bass player using that continuous line. Felix Sockwell is THE master of this art form and after my experience I bow to his awesomeness. If you’re not familiar with his work, check it out. I scribbled out at least 6 different sketches attempting to pull it off. I ended up mashing all six together and was surprisingly happy with the result.

For my second concept I decided to once again play with the negative space, by using the player to form the “empty” bass. He looked like some dude you’d see in a smokey club pluckin’ some jazz. Finally for my third concept I threw out the player and decided to feature the bass more prominently. by using the word to form the image.

Feeling confident that I had covered at least one of my bass’ (the classical one . . . dah-dum-CHING) I decided to try a more edgy concept that would appeal to both types of players. Using the universal hand sign for “Rock and roll” I placed the necks of each bass on the hand. Classical on Mr. Pointer and electric on Pinky. I thought it was edgy, humorous and most importantly functional.

While the client agreed and liked it very much, it, along with the others, was ultimately rejected. However one of them did appeal with some tweaking. We took the third concept and replaced the word “bass” by filling it in with a solid image. By filling this in it not only formed half of the bass it also created the first initial “B” in the title. I added the initial “C” where the f-holes would originally be. This concept was ultimately approved.