Cycle4_ProcessBook by Lois Wang

CYCLE4 Branding Process Book

DESN320 | Project Branding: Cycle 4 Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

TABLE OF CONTENTS CYCLE4

Design Brief

Analysis

Moodboards

Visual Research

Sketches +Ideation

Refined concept

First Draft of Logo+wordmark

Colours + Typeface

Refined Logo+wordmark

Applications

Self-assessment

CYCLE4 | Intro The CYCLE 4 Foundation is a non-profit organization, which provides cycling events for cyclists. They believe in supporting what matters to individuals, and helps people make a difference for causes they care deeply about. Primarily CYCLE 4 focused on cycling events for juvenile diabetes, calling themselves CYCLEBETES. Now they are in a transition from only supporting juvenile diabetes to various causes that matters to different people. CYCLE4 works with organizations and groups to create fun and easy cycling programs. These programs empower individuals to raise awareness and funds for a cause that matters to them, while promoting health, wellness, and leadership(CYCLE4).

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

CYCLE4 | Divisions Currently, the organization contains three divisions: CYCLE4 Student Leadership (youth), Elementary Bike Club (children) and National Relay (adult). Student Leadership (youth) focuses on providing students with complete set of lessons, tutorials and outstanding mentors. Elementary Bike Club (children) focuses on programs for children in grade four to seven to learn cycling skills and safety information. National Relay (adult) focuses on bringing communities across Canada together in a trek that extends coast-to-cost, from Vancouver to Halifax. The events help participants to rise funds and support for their causes (CYCLE4).

The main communication platform of this organization is their website. It offers basic information about different divisions and events and posts about each event. The main focus of CYCLE4 is the National Relay, which implements the notion of â&#x20AC;&#x153;for what mattersâ&#x20AC;? the best.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Design Brief Because CYCLE4 is in a transition of becoming a more open organization, they need a brand-new identity to unify the community to refresh their image. The re-branding aims to emphasize more on the idea of â&#x20AC;&#x153;for what mattersâ&#x20AC;? to different people than just the cycling events. In this case, the key words I want to focus are passion, variety, community, connection, communication and causes. The final outcomes should be an identity mark that can represent the whole community and as well as each division. This mark should be suitable for all applications including prints and digital (business cards, stationary, website, etc.)

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Analysis The existing identity mark is just the wordmark â&#x20AC;&#x153;CYCLE4â&#x20AC;? with icons of wellness, health, support and learning under it. This wordmark only communicates the name but not the notion of the organization. The four icons do convey the variety of what CYCLE4 offers, but they also makes the whole identity lack of focus. The new identity mark needs to be more consistent and convey less but stronger concept.

current wordmark

The current colour pallet is red and white, which is really strong and solid. Although these colours express senses of passion and authoritativeness, they are too classic so that they are over-used by many branding designs. The new colour pallet needs to be more unique, vivid and eye-catching.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Moodboards The moodboard (see next page) contains cycling photos, colours and typefaces to give the client a sense of the design direction. Instead of using sporty photos, I chose photos with landscapes in bright colours. I also included photos of people in different age groups. These photos aim to communicate ideas of connecting people together, cycling for fun, expressing your emotions and embracing nature. The colours were taken from the photos. They aim to provide vividness to the brand. The typefaces I chose are all geometric sans-serifs, which gives a sense of fresh, clean and clear.

Feedback from the client: The client thought that the photos of outdoor cycling matche the image of CYCL4. The photos of different people also show that CYCL4 accept people from a wide range of age groups. She pointed out that the photo of a person’s hands making a heart shape links the rest of the photos together, which tells the notion of “cycling together for what matters to us”.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

4 What Matters Helvetica

4 What Matters BentonSans

4 What Matters Gotham

4 What Matters Futura

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Visual Research I started to research about cycling-related logos and wordmarks. The main elements that frequently used in cycling-related design are the motion of cycling and the structure of a bike wheel. Here are some examples among them:

These two examples are logos of two British cycling clubs. Bothl of them use icons of a human riding a bike. Both icons are drawn with brush stokes to bring senses of fluency and humanist. However, because this style of cycling icons is over-used in millions of logos, it becomes a mediocre element. Logos with this kind of icons are really hard to stand out from the rest.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

These two examples are logos of two American cycling organizations. Both of them use bike wheel as an element in the design. The first one abstracts the round shape of a wheel and combines it with the wordmark to represents alliance and unity. The second one uses the structure of the wires of the bike wheel, and applies colours to it to mimic the sunshine, which matches the theme “summer”.

The identity mark for CYCLE4 needs to have both element of cycling and CYCLE4’s focuses, in order to strongly represent CYCLE4’s notion than just cycling in general. The foccuses of this branding are connection, community and communication.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Sketches + Ideation I started brainstorming by sketching on paper.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Two approaches

The first approach uses the wire structure of a bicycle wheel to illustrate the senses of connection between different people in the organization. In other words, people with different causes are connected through cycling. The big wheel conceptually represents the cycling community. Another major element of the branding is photo. The photos will be about people doing cycling and their causes of doing it.

chosen sketches

abstract of the wires to represent connection

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

CYCLE4

Y C L E 4

CYCLE4 vector images generated from the structure of the wheel

some logo drafts

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

The second approach focuses on the cycling hand signals,which is an unique communication method of cycling. This non-vocal communication way allow cyclers exchange information during cycling, which evokes the sense of connection. The major element of the organization image is icon. The icons work similar to cycling hand gestures that communicate information.

cycling hand signals

chosen sketches DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

CYCLE

vector images generated from the sketches

C 4 E L C

LE4 C Y

4 CLE

CLE4 Y C

LE4 C Y

wordmarks with generated images

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Refined Concept The refined concept is based on the first approach. I decided to combine logo and wordmark together as one whole mark, in order to keep consistency. The shape or structure of the wheel needs to be blended into the logo to represent cycling. The “4” should be emphasized to enhance the importance of “for everyone’s causes”.

CYCLE4 DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

First Draft of Logo + wordmark I designed three versions of the logo+wordmark. The large size 4 emphasizes the importance of everyone’s causes. The round shape of the 4 mimic the shape of the bike wheel. The second two versions are added a pattern of wires to enhance the sense of a bike wheel.

Problems with these marks: -When the mark is small, it is really hard to tell the word “cycle”. -Because the word cycle is underneath the 4, it might be read as “4 cycle”. -The pattern deconstructs the shape of the 4, which makes it hard for people to recognize. -There is oo much contrast between the thin “cycle” and the bold “4”.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Colour + Typeface Because CYCLE4 accepts people from a wide rang of age groups, I decided to use a warm colour and a cold colour to represent both young people and adults. The primary colours are a dark grey and a bright orange. The orange represents vividness and passion. The dark grey balances the orange with its density and depth. The secondary colours are a light grey and a teal. The teal represents mature and friendliness. The light grey balances the teal with its lightness. All of them are selected from Pantone Matching System.

primary colours

Pantone 8423C CMYK = 57/54/51/22 RGB = 10/96/97

secondary colours

Pantone Orange 021 EC CMYK = 0/71/100/0 RGB = 233/85/20

Pantone 8420C CMYK = 45/42/38/3 RGB = 146/139/141

Pantone 320 EC CMYK = 100/0/30/2 RGB = 0/153/170

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

The typeface that I chose is Gotham. It is a geometric sans-serif typeface that has both round and straight elements, which matches the shape of the large 4. Gotham is designed to be highly legible, so it is suitable for both large and small display. This font family comes in eight weights with accompanying italics. The following are four weights that I chose to use in this branding.

GOTHAM-book:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

book italic:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

GOTHAM-medium: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

medium italic: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

GOTHAM-bold:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

bold italic:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

GOTHAM-black:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

black italic:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Refined Logo + wordmark The refined logo+wordmark has the word “cycle” being brought out a little bit to be more legible, and also it makes the entire mark easy to be read as “cycle4”. The font of the word is Gotham bold, which matches the boldness of the large 4. The horizontal stroke of the 4 is extended to aline the word “cycle” to keep consistency. The pattern of wires is taken off, since the round shape of the 4 is clear enough to represent the shape of a bike wheel and also a helmet. The negative space of the 4 can also be seen as a bicycle flag. In case of needs, I also designed marks with three divisions’ names. Originally the name of each division is the name of its program, which is hard for the audience to figure out which division is for which age group. I simplified the names to a more general form, in order to make them more understandable and unified.

on black background

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Applications The applications include stationary, business cards, postcards and website. The print-based applications have two versionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; orange(primary) version and teal (secondary) version. I designed them to be simple but with high contract, in order to make the brand more eye-catching and contemporary stylish.

Business cards Joe Smith

Joe Smith

Adviser

tell: 604 xxx xxx fax: 604 xxx xxx e-mail: joesmith@cycle4.com

100-400 Brooksbank Avenue North Vancouver, BC Canada V7J 3S8 4whatmatters.com

the name is placed on top of the card so that when it is taken from the walet, the name shows first

high contrast between the logo+wordmark and the background colour, which aims to make the card really eye-catching.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Letterhead

0.3"

0.5"

0.8"

font size of the text is 8pt with 12pt line spacing

no text go further than this line 0.7"

0.3"

0.5"

0.8"

March 3, 2012

100-400 Brooksbank Avenue North Vancouver, BC Canada V7J 3S8

Dear xxx,

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Sincerely,

Joe Smith Adviser

tell: 604 xxx xxx fax: 604 xxx xxx e-mail: joesmith@cycle4.com

0.7"

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Envelopes

4 WHAT MATTERS

CYCLE4 Canada 100-400 Brooksbank Avenue North Vancouver, BC V7J 3S8

4 WHAT MATTERS

a phrase of “4 what matters” is placed on the back top to remind people of the notion of CYCLE4

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Postcards The samples show how marks in different colours are used in different application environment.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Website The navigation bar is shortened, and the logo+mark and navigation options are put side-by-side.

Original website design

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang

Self-assessment • Good re-design of the logo+mark, which has a clean and solid look. It conveys the notion of “4 what matters” better than the original logo. • The new colour pallet is strong and fresh, but not sure about two complete opposit colours can work well together. * Good stationary design, which is simple but attractive. * The logo+wordmark only has one form. There might be some situations that this form will not be able to fit in. * When the logo+wordmark is in black and white, it is a little bit heavy so that it may be read as “4 cyle”.

DESN320 | Project Branding | Cycle 4 | Client: Hailey Yang | Designer: Lois Wang