Laughing Sunrise is an independent design studio run by Artemis Hatfield, a designer & artist from the UK, currently based in Southampton.
Artemis’ areas of expertise include branding, publication, and poster design, but they’re always up for exploring other types of projects and have connections with a network of other creatives for if any part of a project needs an extra set of skills brought in. This could include product/editorial photography, illustration, VFX, animation, and more.
Delos Publishing
Branding & Publication Design
Delos Publishing is a sister-business to Laughing Sunrise, so this design was self-led. For Delos we wanted a dynamic logo and brand identity that felt modern, while reflecting a more traditional industry with a strong history.
For the logo design, we went back to the basics of publishing: Paper.
While these days you can publish digitally, paper is fundamental to publishing and and central to everything we do at Delos. One of the big decisions we make for every publication is what type of paper it’ll use, should it be rough or smooth, should it be glossy or matte, should it have a fleck or be a clean white page? It becomes the canvas, it becomes part of the medium.
So how does this logo represent paper?
Well, paper is made from cellulose fibres, which we get from trees and other plant life, and because this is an organic compound it has a structure that makes it what it is. And if you look closely at that structure in the diagram below, you’ll notice the shape that outlines “Delos” over to the right (with a few tweaks, of course).
So is paper all there is to it? Well, not quite. When we came across this shape we started to think about what else might suggest and make people feel, because usually that’s more important that the clever reasoning for a logo. Once we isolated it from the rest of the diagram, we found that it started to resemble a speech bubble, like you’d see in a comic book or graphic novel, and while Delos doesn’t publish those we do publish visual arts, and a lot of our publications are serial like comic books. A speech bubble could also relate to “speaking up” , which relates to the artwork Delos publishes from artists in marginalised communities by helping share their voices.