KLSD Radio : Tripping With a Logo

There's a new radio advertising agency in New York, going by the slightly loaded name of KLSD Radio (see www.klsdradio.com). It's founded by agency veterans Lori Korchek and Fred Stesney, who turned to Lorna Stovall of one-woman design shop Designminx (e-mail: [email protected]) for the brand identity. "At first, KLSD wanted to mimic the look of a real radio station logo, but after some research we realized that most of them were very plain, and some were just awful," recalls Stovall, who is also creative director for off-air at Lifetime TV. "KLSD approaches radio advertising in an unusual way, so we felt that the logo needed to be a little off as well. Keeping the radio station idea, I developed their 'call letters' by hand to show more of the partners' personality. Because of the name and how trippy their work can be, there's a psychedelic wink in the letterforms. But we all wanted to avoid a retro look, since it's not what KLSD is about. The letterforms needed to be modern and to interact well as a unit. The colors were the next challenge, and rhodamine red, black and gray were the clear winners