About This Project

Orion Effectworks is a (hypothetical) boutique guitar pedal manufacturer, specializing in unique sounding effects. Designing for Orion Effectworks is in part a way for me to practice illustration, but mostly an outlet for the weird effects ideas I think about in my spare time.

The basis for the Orion Effectworks logo, and all individual pedal logos, is a modified, roughed up, and skewed version of Hoefler & Co.’s excellent Knockout typeface. The grittiness of the logo reflects the hand-built quality of the pedals, but also the sonic weirdness they can unleash.

The primary “Orion” logo features a dot added over the “I” and an umlaut added over the second “O”, which represent Orion’s Belt, but also act as a nod to the unnecessary umlauts found in hard rock and heavy metal bands like Motörhead and Hüsker Dü.