Shutterstock’s Pixels Of Fury by Jesse Reed

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CLIENT

An inno­v­a­tive glob­al e‑commerce com­pa­ny and a lead­ing provider of stock pho­tos, illus­tra­tions, and footage. Shut­ter­stock pro­vides roy­al­ty-free con­tent to cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als world­wide, spe­cial­iz­ing in sub­scrip­tion prod­ucts that are sim­ple and user-friendly.

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BRIEF

Cre­ate a mark that would allow dif­fer­ent AIGA chap­ters to “re-skin” and repur­pose it in a way that was reflec­tive of their city. The client com­pared their vision to that of the orig­i­nal MTV “M”, and the flex­i­ble graph­ic treat­ments it received. The chal­lenge was essen­tial­ly to cre­ate a blank can­vas with a unique form.

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APPROACH

Through­out all of the ini­tial direc­tions we used a square, or pix­el, as the struc­tur­al base. To allow each chap­ter the flex­i­bil­i­ty of manip­u­lat­ing the mark with­out chang­ing its form, it need­ed to be more of a shape, rather than lin­ear or pure­ly typo­graph­ic. Although most peo­ple only see the “P” as the mark, it actu­al­ly came through cre­at­ing a P, O, and F with­in the same grid of pix­els. The ulti­mate form allowed design­ers to use the space pic­to­ri­al­ly, tex­tu­ral­ly, or sim­ply chang­ing its col­or palette to reflect their city’s personality.

When Shutterstock created “Shutterstock’s Pixels of Fury: A Live Creative Inspiration Tournament” with AIGA, the national design organization, we reached out to Jesse Reed to design the identity for these exciting live design competitions that would take place around the world. We needed a logo that could work locked-up with Shutterstock’s core brand identity, but could also be adapted by local AIGA chapters for their local events. Jesse delivered a versatile, pixelated “P” that could be localized by layering local imagery from Shutterstock’s vast collection into the “P,” and created a lockup wordmark that could be used with Shutterstock’s new brand identity. It has since been used by ten local chapters, and will soon be launched internationally. — Hani Hong, Director of Marketing and Eric Sams, Art Director of Shutterstock, Inc.