New Punctuation Mark/ Self Promotion

Jonathan Barnbrook issued about 3 briefs I think it was, and one of them was to create a new punctuation mark.  I was interested by the brief because its seemed like a chance to have a bit of fun and be creative.  Whilst being restricted to creating just one symbol i was intrigued at the endless possibilities of what this mark might be and the implications it might have.

I began looking at a variety of different signs and symbols and how they communicate and started to read up on semiotics.  I decided the best way to go about it was to think of an emotion I felt could be symbolised and then come up with a series of marks and test them on an audience to see what they gather from them.

I decided my punctuation mark would symbolise sarcasm.  I chose to represent sarcasm because I thought it would be useful in a practical sense.  For example there is a mark for a question - ? and a mark to exclaim - ! . That's about all we need to express in order to make a sentence understandable or for the sentence to simply take on a new meaning.  The exclamation mark can represent a number of emotions like sarcasm BUT... there is no way of telling in a sentence if someone is actually being sarcastic except by using our own judgement.  To create a new mark based on sarcasm, irony or simply taking the piss, would somewhat clear up a lot of confusion that can sometimes go on, especially with conversations in media like text message, facebook and MSN.  Theoretically writers, poets, novelists usually have good enough writing skill and wit that they wouldn't necessarily need the new mark but in day to day use I think the mark could be very useful, especially as I'm quite a sarcastic person by nature :/... which leads me onto my next idea.

After a while I began to think that because I am creating a new punctuation mark which portrays one of my personality traits then why not take it further to act as a light hearted self-promotion pack which could include logo, business card, badge, t-shirt, letterhead and others too.  I was thinking  that nobody would really want to hire a sarcastic person no matter what industry they are in, so Its probably going to have to be sarcastic and ironic within its self (which might be hard to pull off).  Sort of like a "look at me and how great my design skills are - Peter Saville? - Peter who? Peter can smoke me off etc etc" kind of thing. Without being too much of an arsehole of course.

Ok so I decided on what i want my symbol to look like.  After ages of showing people different symbols that I had made, everyone's opinion on what they might mean ended up being completely different - it wasn't much help.  This is probably because new symbols that don't look like anything they have already seen (which is what I tried to achieve) have no meaning or any connotations already attached to them.  Soooo... I thought the trick would be to just go with my mark and try to attach a meaning with it or force it upon people.

The mark I created I tried to keep simple so that people could remember it well but also write it easily.  I didn't want people having to try and write some Chinese like symbol or not recognising it if they saw it again because it was so obscure.  The mark is sort of based on two question marks (one that has been inverted) joined together.  My idea was that a sarcastic remarks usually bears two questions of - "did they mean that?" and "or was he being sarcastic?".  Anyway well at least the mark isn't just a complete made up load of shit. Well it is but you know what I mean.  I also tried to consider things like line weight and length and what shape the dot should be, as well as distance between the two objects.  Should the circle be perfectly spherical?  Should it be short and stubby or long and thin (no innuendos intended)?  That kind of thing.

I have recently been placing the new mark alongside the word sarcastic so that people can relate it to something.  I tried to put the two together in a lot of different ways to give maximum impact but also to be fun and interesting to look at.

I also put together more than one mark to try and form some kind of logo but I'm not sure how well this has turned out or if they cause too much confusion.  They seem to remind me of doilies, bugs and chemical symbols at the moment.  Although i quite like the chemical equation look - it gives a sense of mystery, puzzlement and something new and exciting like a new potion perhaps!

I am going to create a large fold out poster (maybe A1) that has all my designs using only the punctuation mark and the word sarcasm.  I want it to be a creative and interesting piece that becomes something more and more each time it folds out, kind of leading you on deeper into how the new mark and logo were formulated.  I suppose it will be a similar thing to the poster we were shown by Si Scott in his lecture - very conscious about layout and legibility.