Re-brand At the beginning of the year during the summer I realised that my self-branding from second year wasn’t the way I wanted to be portrayed and it really didn’t demonstrate me. Therefore I decided to re-brand my self-branding. I liked the concept of my logo and felt that worked but it was the way I portrayed it and the colours that felt off.
I started by brainstorming my likes personal and design wise. I tried to focus down what made up me as a personality and a designer so I could then portray those qualities through different devices such as simple and clean design by using a sans serif typeface. My colour palette was influenced from a section of my wall I had gathered different items for inspiration. I often source inspiration from things I see and experience so I felt this was a very relevant way to visualise myself.
Online Portfolio I knew that I would have to set up an online presence through a website at some point this year instead of just mocking one up. Therefore I searched online for nice website layout and designs pinpointing what aspects it was that I liked.
I then tried the apply these qualities in my own sketches using my own projects. I wanted to keep it minimal and interactive using photography as the basis of the design. I also wrote a navigation diagram so I could organise all the information I needed to include.
Dunked I used online website builder Dunked initially for my website. This created limitations in template but I tried to stick to the main qualities I had pinpointed in my research. I worked quite a lot on the site tried to bring my new branding to all different aspects. Seeing the colour scheme in practice I thought it worked well and the palette complimented each other.
However when I’d starting to finally build up my site to a point where I’d add work as I created it through the year my trail ended (unbeknown to me I was even on a trail). This led me to have to abandon this website and start a new one on cargo collective. From this though I now knew how I wanted my website to look and how the palette could work across the different aspects.
Business Card I chose a pulped card board for my business card as I felt this fitted best with my palette and brand identity. The dark green printed really nice onto the stock. I also laser cut out an emboss plate to imprint my logo onto the reverse of the card. I had done a flipped text conversation on one side of the card. This was to bring the concept into play with the copy. The information details read one way and the rest was a friendly tone of voice. However when read together they also make sense.
Unfortunately the embossing wasn’t as successful as I had hoped due to the fact that the stock doesn’t make it that visible. I also hadn’t flipped the logo so it was actually in reverse. I decided that I favoured the stock and therefore wouldn’t emboss my logo but print it instead.
Development I hadn’t approached my branding for a while as the majority of the re-brand was done at the beginning of the year. I looked back on it near the end and realised it needed some development. I decided to alter my business cards as the flip concept was confusing and I didn’t have much feedback on them when I gave them out to people. When doing this I decided to bring more of the colour palette into the design.
I added a strip border along my branding using the duck egg blue. This added more detail and decoration to my stripped branding. I also had many alterations to my new website over the year. I had to alter the file formats and scale, colour palette and layout after experiencing portfolio interviews and getting advice. This made my website much more effective and clear.
Final Resolution I redesigned my printed material to be more professional and serious about the industry. I wanted to present myself as a serious contender so I stripped back the bright colours and quirky elements to my initial branding to present a more soft, friendly approach rather than bold and brash.
I feel that this simple and minimal layout is a lot more effective and to the point than my old design which was quite distracting and childish.