Tattoo studioIdentity and sign
Drawn in ink.
Sealed in red.
00The project
- Client
- Wild Crane Tattoos
- Trade
- Tattoo studio
- Year
- 2022
A tattoo is a line drawn on skin, so Wild Crane’s mark begins with lines: some twenty dry-brush strokes make a red-crowned crane taking off, its primaries splayed, its legs trailing as two long lines. The only red on the bird is its crown; a vermilion seal cut with 鶴 sits at its feet. The name is set in a clean geometric sans, with a red dot in the C to answer the crown.
- Mark: crane and seal
- Wordmark
- Stacked and horizontal lockups
- Shopfront sign proposal
01The crane
One touch of red
on the whole bird.
The crane is drawn in strokes, not traced in outline: the primaries splay one stroke at a time, the neck runs to the beak in a single line, the legs trail behind, and the white body is simply the paper left alone. The crown is the only red on the bird. The seal at its feet, cut with 鶴, signs the drawing the way a painter would.
02Name and lockups
A red dot in the C
answers the crown.
The crane carries the hand, so the name stays quiet: WILD CRANE TATTOOS in open-spaced geometric capitals, with a dot of seal red set inside the C so that name and bird share one colour. Two lockups do the work — stacked for square avatars and stickers, horizontal for the sign and the web.
Crane and name
Seal and the dot in the C
The crown, nowhere else
03The shopfront
From across the street,
the name reads first.
For the shopfront the horizontal lockup is drawn out into a single line: the crane at left, WILD CRANE at full size, TATTOOS smaller and spaced wide to the far end. On a long fascia the name reads first, the trade second, and the crane rewards whoever walks closer.
