I love Helvetica. No, really. I really love Helvetica and all of the other traits of Swiss minimalist design.

The problem I have with Helvetica is the fact that there are designers out there who consider receiving the copy from the client, setting the type in Helvetica and sending it back a full Graphic Design job. It disturbs me to think that some designers get paid thousands to set some headings in Helvetica and not do a whole lot else with it.

ASDecor8 is the business of a painter decorator who gave me a lot of freedom with the design. His only request was that his branding would look exciting and different to that of most other painter decorators. As soon as I saw the name of his business I knew it was destined to be written in Helvetica bold, and the idea of the background colour being ‘painted on’ came quite quickly too. The ‘paint’ background means it can be a solid colour which becomes thinner, gaining texture, as you follow it to the right. Not only does this allow me to turn the minimalist style of design into something more textured and layered, but it also helps to give the feeling of progression and change – as if the business cards, flyers and website themselves are being ‘decorated’, like my client has been decorating them himself, going from boring white to bright orange.

It was also important to me that the ‘painting’ would appear complete on the left but still in progress on the right – this is the way we read in the west (if it was for a Japanese business, for example, I’d have had it the opposite way around), and therefore is the direction we consider ‘forward’ when on a horizontal plane. It’s all about progress, change, improvement.