Logo Explained
The Illinois Railway Museum logo was designed to resemble the simple and classic look of railway company signs through the decades.
The symbol has ambigous meaning, it forms the shape of a locomotive silhouette and the line branches off in three directions to create a switch track. The three branches of the switch track represent the three different types of locomotives that can be found at the museum: diesel, steam, and streetcars.
The wordmark was based on Futura Condensed Medium. This type was chosen for it’s similar characteristics to the symbol, as well as the stylized block lettering that is found on new and old locomotives.
Stationary Explained
The designs were kept minimalistic in desing and priting technique to stay cost effective. Great attention was put into the details to make sure the designs came off as timeless and elegant rather than cheap.
A banner-like version of the logo was introduced for the stationary. Instead of being equal on all sides, this version bleeds off on the top. This "mark of approval" sets the stationary apart from the rest of the branding and gives it a more serious and premium look.
Poster Process Explained
This poster series was created to lend attention to the history behind the locomotives that have been aquired by the museum over the years.
Images of locomotives at the Illinois Railway Museum from their past lives were found and then printed. These prints were then photographed with with a Polaroid 100 Automatic Land Camera. The backing of the negative from the photo that was taken was removed with bleach, the spotting and flaws in the pictures came from the rough process of the removal.
The dimensions of the poster match that of the Illinois Railway Museum logo. The symbol and wordmark were laser cut out of a piece of black cardstock and then attached to a scratched sheet of plexi-glass. The scratches in the plexi-glass can be seen in the prints and add to the rough and aged appearance. The stencil blocks light from hitting certain areas of the paper in the darkroom printing process of the image, the areas where the black paper is stuck to the plexi-glass will not receive light, therefore they end up lighter than the surrounding parts of the image where the light from the photo enlarger is able to pass through to the photo paper.
In the darkroom the negative that was recovered from the Polaroid picture earlier is placed into a photographic enlarger, which will project the image onto the surface below. The photo paper is placed in its position and the stencil made earlier is placed on top of it. An eleven second exposure is made, in the final three seconds of the exposure the stencil with the logo on it is removed. This allows some light to hit the areas that were covered earlier, which results in the lighter ghost image that the symbol and workmark are made up of. The paper is then developed in a series of chemical baths, then it is dried and prepared for scanning.
The images that were created in the darkroom are then scanned and adjusted accordingly so that they are ready to be printed at a larger scale. Lustre paper was used for the posters for its qualities similar to the original darkroom prints.
