I caught a rerun this morning of an interview John Mayer did recently about his new album Battle Studies. He was asked about how it differs from his last release, Continuum (2006). He brought up some interesting points about how Continuum was meant to be "perfect." He redid certain vocals nearly 100 times to get them just right, the same with the instruments. He smoothed it out as far as he possibly could. On the other hand, Battle Studies is "purposely rough." He felt that, lyrically and thematically, it was the most approachable album he's done, so he wanted to treat the music the same way.
It got me thinking about when it's appropriate to do this with design. I've heard that art directors and designers go back and forth all the time on whether the hand-drawn look is appropriate or not, and I'd put in my $0.02 that there are times it definitely works. I wanted to take this approach with the Cable Table brand with the hopes of making it more welcoming to a younger, artsy-er and maybe unorganized audience. This newer, sketchy logo (created thanks to the magic of carbon paper + my previous logo w/ a few things added) is meant to give off a look of "You are capable of making this table whatever you need it to be. It's your canvas." The components would possibly be sold as attachments rather than already included and set up. It's not as sleek as what I originally offered to the lifehacker crowd, it's much more DIY and open-ended.
By the way, I've found that carbon paper is a great way to bring your designs back into the sketchbook and that experimental mindset after playing around with them on a computer. I highly recommend it. It helps you get "closer" with the forms of the typography and shapes, plus I've found it helps your freehand sketching skills later on as well.
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