Propagation house

BRIEF

DELIVERABLES

CONCEPT

Rebrand a residential recording studio named ‘Propagation House’. This is a live client brief. The client would like to retain their current ‘brand’ of being laid back lovers of rock and folk music who happen to record it professionally, however they currently have no visual identity and a very dated website. The aim of this brief is to fix this.

A suitable visual identity for the studio.

A new website.

I plan to create a series of different identities for the client in the form of logos. Mark Ellis, the client, is unsure of the direction he would like his studio to go in visually, as it has gone without ‘branding’ for some time. As a result the identity will have be built from the ground up.

By offering a selection to choose from Mark will be able to have some form of choice. I anticipate that the first set of logos will then be refined to a more polished outcome and many changes will be made over time as I improve the identity and Mark changes his mind and comes to terms with what he wants.

I must be aware that my own taste takes a backseat during this process as the client has the final say in terms of style and content. However it is still my job to provide professional solutions to their problems and communicate their brand in an effective way. I must produce work that is visually attractive, suitable for the clients needs and functionally efficient.

TONE OF VOICE Rock, Folk, Laid-back, professional, confident, competent.

Once progress on the visual identity has began to slow I can begin to develop the website.

RESEARCH Having gotten to know Mark, the client, a little better I began to formulate ideas of how I would begin to create an entirely new visual identity.

Given the subject of the brief was to design the identity for a recording studio that focused on rock and folk acts, I started by studying aspects of graphic design which are most commonly associated with rock and folk music; the gig poster.

In addition to this being a useful place to start in terms of beauty in design it also serves a more commercial purpose; as the recording studio seeks to attract new acts it would make great sense to work with a visual identity that may seem attractive to musicians.

The overwhelming majority of these posters feature a hand drawn type title and an illustrated or heavily modified image. It is clear to see that this influenced the identity of propagation house as the visual identity developed.

I based the final logo’s type on the top right poster, taking some of the characters shapes as inspiration.

DEVELOPMENT This is a page of early sketches for several ideas regarding the Propagation House visual identity.

The recurring theme of watering cans stems from the first logo that Mark used back in the 90s that is no longer used in any capacity. Although this could make a visual pun on the old propagation house ‘growing musicians’ like it used to grow plants, the watering can will probably be dropped as a piece of identity.

I have marked the sketched designs which have elements that were bought forward and used later in the logo development with a red line.

These, to me, represented a good range of styles for mark to ponder over whilst not straying to far from my own aesthetic tastes.

Most of these sketches involved drawing out Propagation House or initials in styles of typography found on the gig posters I had been studying.

Others are drawings of simples shapes illustrating key items in Propagations Houses ‘brand’, speakers, hillsides, watering cans and mixing desks.

LOGO SET Having chosen a series of identities to develop further I created a series of vector logos in illustrator. I then presented these to Mark as to give him more choice in the development of the project.

This is the stage where I learnt all about client/ designer differences. I would have initially selected the pH stylised identity, as it represented the history and future of the Propagation House in the most simple and effective way possible. pH as an icon was intended to signify its use in science to denote acidity levels, an important aspect when propagating plants. For the studio it could also refer to the ‘levels’ used in the audio mixing process, illustrated by the use of the descending bars.

This was not the identity which Mark chose to continue with however so my efforts where put into developing a hand drawn type logo. Something I have never attempted before.

It is important to note that this identity was successful for a good reason, it was one which I had developed in direct response to the gig posters, and as a result has a certain affinity towards people in the music industry.

The two that Mark selected for further development where then refined further and presented in a stylized way for a final decision. These are seen here (bottom two images).

IDENTITY APPLIED The client selected the illustrated identity. The next stage of the brief was the apply this to a range of paraphernalia to test its viability as an identity and its visual presence and strength.

The identity is certainly recognisable, and looks entirely unique, a huge strength when its primary function will be to attract creative musicians.

The type used was hand drawn by myself with characters based off of an old gig poster. The central circular pattern was intended to look like a speaker icon turned to face the viewer, however Mark believes that it looks like a drum, illustrating that the identity is visually engaging. I have also added four lightning bolts to frame the centre of the logo. These are a staple identity for rock music, and also relate to the electrical nature of recording music and noise, volume and sound. In terms of logo design they also balance out what would otherwise be a ver long and narrow slab of text, something that I had to consider constantly whilst working with such a long name.

RESPONSIVE WEBSITE The final stage of this brief was to create a new website for the client. I wanted to completely revolutionise the existing one and bring it up to date with totally new features and functionality that would have been impossible when the old site was built.

As a result the new website is fully responsive and works over all screen sizes from smartphone to full HD monitor.

I was able to achieve this by using webflow, which helps to create HTML and CSS which responds to the resizing of web browsers.

This is noted here most obviously in the layout of the iPhone screen, which uses buttons centre aligned rather than a menu bar which runs along the top of the page.

Other elements of the page can also resize, most importantly the logo, images an text.

Getting this to work has been a challenge, however I believe that having a responsive screen size is one of the most important elements in designing any user interface today.

The screens here feature two sections of the final website, the home page and the features menu respectively. The images serve to illustrate the fully responsive website.

WEBSITE These images display other parts of the website, in a way which illustrates its layout and features. They do not however show the whole site.

Most of the site is based on a simple two or three column grid. If there is any bulk of text I have used two columns, if the content is mainly image based; three. This has allowed the website to remain clear and clean in design, a huge improvement over the existing site.

I have also added some fixed position images which are fully responsive to the user as they scroll down the page, creating the illusion of movement. This is seen in the top left and middle left screen here, with the image of a microphone, which runs under the top layer content.

Another new feature is a working embedded map, supported by google maps.

This is a great way for the client to prove the isolation of the residential studio and its prime positioning in the countryside to prospective musicians. A huge selling point of the studio.

I have used a mixture of colour and greysclae images to retain a clear, but colourful aesthetic, without going over the top and becoming vulgar.

The final feature to note is the navigation bar which is in a fixed position and follows the user. It also has a ‘smoothscroll’ function which allows the user to use it to navigate vertically.

EVALUATION For me this has been a hugely successful brief, increasing my confidence in web design, developing visual identities and most importantly, in dealing with clients.

It has helped that Mark is a fairly laid back client and has been more than accommodating with my college calendar.

As it was important for me to visit the studio in Cornwall, this brief did take longer than anticipated to complete, finding time to get there and back as well as communicating with Mark meant that the brief was a background task all year rather than a brief I could focus on and complete in one block of time.

As a side effect of this there was plenty of time to reflect on the works progress as it developed.

The most noticeable part of this reflection was now my skills in web design improved over the year. If this brief had been completed when I originally planed for it to be, before Christmas, the website would have suffered in design, layout and functionality.

I believe that the new identity fits Propagation House perfectly and was an interesting bit of design development for myself. This is becuase I researched the intended viewers world through gig posters, and built a unique logo based on that, rather than basing the logo off of another logo, as is usually my process. The only downside to the new logo is its sheer size, a consequence of the long name, limiting its effectiveness when scaled down to smaller sizes. Although this was bought up in one of my correspondence emails with Mark, it remained his choice to move forward with it rather than switching to one of the more scalable designs.

The ‘final product’ of this brief is really the website, which will hopefully go live as soon as Mark updates some of the text and provides the final images. It will be the first website, other than my own, that I have designed to go live. I am particularly proud that it is fully responsive and will be viewable on a range of screen sizes.

If I had some more time to work on this brief it would be great to develop some printed products and some brand guidelines for Mark to use as he takes on ownership of the new identity.

Becuase this is a live brief and I have a good working relationship with Mark my plan is to continue working for him after the course is over, to develop some more products like brochures and guides to the studio as well as working on new projects for his clients who, as musicians, often want design work done.