News & Blog

Thanks everyone for suggesting topics! Very much appreciated. Some interesting (and unexpected) requests for Anatomy Of… subjects. I’ll start with the one that got the most “votes”: my own logo.

I launched this site in 2003, primarily to separate the client work from my more experimental projects.
To do so, I felt that I should put my own name to it instead of coming up with another obscure word, like ximeraLabs, as a domain name. I found out that muller.com was already taken, and not wanting to settle for anything less than a .com domain I realized I was forced to tack something on to “Muller” to be able to grab a suitable .com domain…

After some brainstorming I settled on hellomuller.com — I used to answer the phone like that (“Hello, Muller (speaking)”), so it sounded natural and above all, it was easy to remember. Right. Now that the name and domain were taken care of, it was time to focus my attention to designing a logo.

I like to see myself as a fairly Modernist designer, so I felt it was important that whatever logo I’d design was something that was primarily functional, but also timeless and in a sense neutral, not a faddish design. I wanted to be able to look at whatever I would design in 20 years time and have it still be relevant. Simultaneously I wanted to create a brand, a label of some sorts that I could use to “sign” my work with.

L-R: Knoll logo, Herman Muller logo, Herman Miller logo

Instinctively I looked at logos and “brands” that I felt comfortable with, logos I was familiar with from a young age (with my dad being an interior designer and having tons of catalogues) — most notably the Knoll logo designed by Massimo Vignelli and the Herman Miller mark designed by George Nelson Associates. Additionally I looked at my dad’s own logo he designed in the early 70s. Aside from the fact that all 3 logos represented furniture design, they all have a Modernist qualities I was looking for, an iconic simplicity that still looks relevant today. Most importantly, I wanted to continue the tradition of those logos and I decided to design a word mark, rather than an icon or abstract symbol. I had already designed an iconic logo for ximeraLabs and wanted to create some distance between that and my new portfolio… even though I was initially still hung up on a graphic device to contain the mark.

First impressions

I started out with some basic attempts of how the logo would sit — was hellomuller going to be one word or split?
I was in two minds about it because even though it was my domain, I preferred the logo to just say “Muller” instead (of course, now everyone knows me as hellomuller! Ah well… I’m not complaining)… I switched from Helvetica (the default Modernist choice) to my personal favourite, Akzidenz Grotesk (the other default Modernist choice).
I’ve always preferred Akzidenz above Helvetica, it has just that little bit of extra character going for it in my opinion (but I still have much love for Helvetica of course).

helloMuller logo

The logo was taking shape now, set in Akzidenz Grotesk Bold. Its not bad, but it takes too much space, and the double ll in “hello” reminded me too much of the Knoll logo, so I said good-bye to hello.

The final Muller logo

Of course I haven’t talked about the design of the double l’s and the © symbol… The reasoning behind them is, I’m afraid, fairly pedestrian. The decision to shift the l’s is purely an aesthetic decision, it just looked good to me, and a detail that set the logo design apart from a simple word mark. While I was designing the logo I was aware that my name isn’t all that rare, and there are a few Mullers out there in creative fields. I reasoned that the © symbol implies a sense of ownership, that this logo and the work it represents is mine.
Simple as that really. Since I was launching this new identity, I added my ximeraLabs logo to it, since that was the site people associated me with. I only used it for my site, and as helloMuller gained in name recognition, I dropped the ximeraLabs logo entirely.

hellomuller.com version 1, 2003-2006

The concept behind the site was very simple, a straight-forward no frills catalogue of work, where all work would be presented in an equal and chronological manner. Someone once likened it to a Letraset catalogue in concept, and I guess its as good a description as any. Just to add that little detail to my site, I added 1 colour in my otherwise black & white site: orange, another personal favourite (what can I say, I’m a child of the 70s). I only used it as a link colour and as a tiny graphic device at the top of the page.
Looking back now, I realize I added it because I was hesitant of having the whole site just B/W (aside from the links).

In 2006 I decided to redesign the site, and at the same time slightly update the logo. I had “signed” work occasionally as “XXXX was designed by Muller”, and liked the tone — almost like a label you’d find in your clothes, or on a piece of furniture (again, the theme of taking ownership of your work), and thus added that byline to the Muller word mark and placed the logo in an orange square to reinforce that label idea. As for the site design, I didn’t want to redesign as such, just update the layout so it could cater to the increased content, and fix issues that I had found in the previous design. I also wanted to give my homepage more reason to exist other than showing my logo really big, so it acts as a bit of a showcase and highlights some key projects. And because it is the homepage I decided to have it slightly different than the rest of the site (which hasn’t really changed that much) and set it in orange, using the metaphor of a book cover (like Grid Systems for example), subtly referencing design tropes, remixing them and making them my own.

In June this version of the site will be online for 3 years, which would mean that another refresh is in order. But to be honest, I’m not tired yet of this design, and the site is still doing what I want it to do — and now with the added blog I can see this incarnation existing for a few more years.