The Hawaii Independent
The Hawaii Independent is a news gathering website with a focus on hyper local information gathering. With competition from major media outlets and established local new services, the Hawaii Independent requested a logo that matched their forward thinking mission as well as allowing flexibility across the digital landscape. ASWS designed a typographic abbreviation of the letter H and I as three equal columns with an inset circle to represent a lowercase ‘i’. The reinterpretation of the letter combination HI, more commonly seen as the state abbreviation, was a major design challenge to overcome.
Taking queues from The Guardian UK and other independent news establishments, The Hawaii Independent requested the ability to integrate color as part of the overall identity system. Color samples and base typography were built to accompany the logo.
Outlying goals for the identity beyond the website was to create a logo form that could represent both Hawaii as a place and express independence or sovereignty. Traditional media outlets are constrained with station call letters or masthead graphics as a form of identity. For the Hawaii Independent website, visual latitude is inherent in the format but requires larger amounts of promotion to break into public conscience. Our hope is to create a logo that communicates it’s message but has the ability transcends beyond it’s traditional journalistic constraints.
