Sisson Studio

Ken Heyman’s logo and website project came to us right in the middle of unfavorable situations, by the beginning of the 2nd semester, 2008.

At that time we were recently baptized Sisson Studio (a long story…) with awful projects and short incomes. However, the good side was that I was full throttle with my digital art projects since march, submitting them to competitions all over the planet and meantime starting a very nice friendship with other designers over the internet. Additionally I signed up for a Facebook account and met some wonderful people there, including a person that became our first international client.

Two extremely complicated website projects were giving us some migraine crisis and we were about to have another one coming from our Russian friend/client from Facebook. We were not satisfied at all with that situation and decided to change our gravitational fields.

We stated: “— Web projects are coming, including one for Russia and this situation is intolerable!”. We were then on the search for someone to work with us.

I contacted an old friend, Guilherme Soares. He presented me to Oliver Barnes. We’re working together since then.

What we would never expect was that Ken’s project was waiting for us in the hands of Oliver and his partner, Fito. Ken needed a new website and a simple signature to his name; a logo. Fact is they sent us Ken’s old website link: kenheyman.com.

Do you take it? Hell yes!

We were speechless and also feeling privileged of working with such an artist. We progressively fell in love with the project as we were gathering more information about who was Ken Heyman and his work. It was love at first sight.

There is nothing we can tell about Ken’s work that someone hasn’t told before. We’re far from being art critics but we certainly feel that shiver down the spine when something touches us. It’s the power of art, latent even in the shape of (apparently simple) photographies.

Ken captured intimate moments of people, whether they were famous or anonymous. Captured happy and painful moments. With his heart on the camera.

The weight of responsibility were upon us like plague. Bullshit! We freed ourselves from it in order to feel what must be done using intuition and inspiration. Capturing the simplicity and emotion of Ken’s click was essential.

During the hunting for ideas, one image flashed before our eyes:

Yes, it was Herb Lubalin’s Avant Garde. Simple, elegant, emotive, charming, vintage font. Perfect for what we needed. And this is it, Ken Heyman’s logo/signature was ready, just as simples as he asked to be:

Next step was designing the website and we wanted it to be charming and elegant and we think we got there. Soon, Ken’s new website at kenheyman.com.

A special thanks to Oliver and Fito for the opportunity.

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More of this project:

// (mini) Visual identity guidelines on ISSUU
// On Behance
// On Flickr