Are you seeing what you are looking at?

A former graphic designer in advertising with an eye for abstract design and selective cropping has put together a unique set of 58 digital photographs that are currently on exhibit at the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library.

Woodmere’s Seymour Levy, a retired designer for Ogilvy & Mather, has used his Nikon D80 SLR camera to create “unusual perspectives of signs and logos you see every day in “The Logo Game: Signs of the Times.”

Levy looked at a FedEx truck parked on his street one day last May, grabbed his camera and took some photos. “Cropping in close, I noticed the arrow between the E and the x,” he said, as he took a reporter on a tour of the exhibit.

Through the next six months, Levy took his camera around the Five Towns area and snapped daytime shots of some very familiar signs and applied selective cropping to produce photos that show a portion of the logo. In some, you can see other shapes, and the fun of the exhibit is in testing one’s powers of recognition.

“They are fun because they have a game-like quality to them, where you can take part mentally and recognize the whole from the part,” said Library Director Susan O. de Sciora. “The way the exhibit is set up with the answer sheet is a lot of fun.”

Levy also had fun taking the photos calling them “my children” he is especially fond of the FedEx, Citibank and Kmart logo photos. “I was at the Gulf Station by West Broadway and Woodmere Boulevard (in Woodmere) and a man saw me taking pictures of his sign and wanted to know there if there was anything wrong with his sign,” Levy said.

Taking photos of the Capital One sign for that bank on Broadway in Hewlett, Levy encountered a bank official, who also wanted to know what he was doing, but didn’t understand the allure of the logo.

“This is about testing your powers of recognition, people see what they are looking at, but they don’t really see what they are looking at,” said Levy, who added he wants people to have fun viewing the exhibit.

He grew up in the Brownsville and Sheepshead Bay sections of Brooklyn and graduated from the High School of Music and Art in upper Manhattan (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School) and then went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

The 50-year Woodmere resident was in advertising for the same amount of time and designed many logos, including the one for the Americana Hotel, where using the American Airlines “A” ensconced an eagle nesting to illustrate shelter and the Killington Resort logo with a skier on the “K.”

Levy also has photos from Sept. 11 on permanent view at the Smithsonian and 11 of those shots will be added to the World Trade Center memorial.

In addition to the exhibit that runs through Jan. 17 and an artist’s reception on Jan. 8, Levy has collected the logo photos into a book. “All art touches different people a different way,” said Rick Fox, the library’s art specialist who helped set up the exhibit. “Art is everywhere and this shows the deliberate choices designers make.”

To view more logo photos visit liherald.com.