This project is based on the assignment of creating a dynamic identity for a city. I chose Nairobi the capital of Kenya. This project for me has mostly been about the process of testing and trying out many different things, I had a lot of inspiration and ideas and I allowed myself to play around with several of them.
One of my ideas was taking different aspects of Nairobi and creating building blocks out of them, by creating different icons representing the many different things Nairobi has to offer, these icons can then be used to create a logo that can be changed in an infinite amount of ways. The idea was also that icons could be added with time; maybe through communities in Nairobi that could create icons for their favorite places and things in Nairobi.
I wanted to incorporate Nairobi into the logo, I painted the letter N and Nairobi in acrylic paint, being inspired by Tinga tinga art I wanted it to have a hand drawn/painted feel to it. When I was scanning them to put into my project the paper moved and it created this cool wavy effect that reminded of a river, this gave me a completely new direction in the project and I spent a long time scanning the paintings while moving them at the same time. As the name Nairobi comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyrobi, meaning cool water.
