With Valentine's Day coming up, probably most of you are caving into the old cliches of red roses, pink hearts, gigantic boxes of chocolate various types of teddy bears and all the cutesy, traditional and -frankly- boring known graphic identity that comes up with this date. Well, the folks at Studio360 came up with the idea of re-thinking all the icons that are so typical of Valentine's and proposing a new design for it.
They approached the project as any other designer would do: Defining the problem, benchmarking, defining goals, and finally a concrete proposal. They took all the elements that are characteristic to this holiday and approached them objectively to see what kind of twitching and tweaking would be needed.
First step: getting rid of the classic red heart.
They deconstructed the basic shape of the classic heart and simplified it to 2 simple interlaced curved lines icon that they have called 'The Valentine'. As they state in their website: The Valentine stands for unity, simplicity, and partnership. It also makes the shape of a “V.”
The new proposed logo is simple as other global recognizable icons, and as they propose, it can be easily interpreted by anyone. After that, they go on questioning the default red colour of the classic Valentine's heart. In this case, they went for a 100% Magenta, as it's a more contemporary, vibrant shade and combined it with a dark grey to give a sense of elegance. Here, a series of combinations of the new logotype and the colours chosen.
After that they go on questioning all the other Valentine's day traditions, such as the greeting cards, giving roses and even proposing a replacement for cupid. It's definetely a fun read and also a reminder that, as designers, we have the freedom to think of our traditions differently to bring something new to the table.