Process Book Michelle Wang Spring Semester 2019
PROJECT OVERVIEW The project is built to teach about logos, brand, and identity. The process of this project was to pick a brand from a list of selected local businesses, create a logo mark based on thorough research, develop a visual identity for the business from a series of 4 brand assets and then creating a printable presentation piece that documents the final solution of the brand.
BRAND OVERVIEW Inspired by Pin Ups, New York Sex Clubs, and Playboy Magazine, DOM has taken the promiscuous pleasures of the 20th century and brought it to the 21st in the form of interior paints. Introducing LOVE ME HARDER, a collection of heat reactive paints that will blow your mind. After years of testing with scientists, lab technicians, and sex specialists, DOM has perfected the art of touch. If these walls could talk.
Buyers of DOM are young eager professionals. Generally speaking, they’re living in urban settings. With the rise of acceptance of alternative sexuality, we see a movement towards exploration and publication of sex. DOM’s clientele are bold, trendaware, edgy; they also probably wear eyeliner and have a cat. Empathetic edgy folk.
PROMISCUOUS SEXY BOLD ECCENTRIC DARING SEVERE COMPELLING DOMINANT RACY TITILLATING DELICIOUS EXCITING PROVOCATIVE BIZARRE NEW CURATED PECULIAR DEVIANT DISTINCT CHEEKY
DESIGN MOODBOARD Drawing inspiration from bold chunky expressive typographic logos, I really wanted to push DOM in the direction of a bold type heavy brand. I was specifically inspired by Le Turtle and the 2016 AFRO PUNK brand. My moodboard draws inspiration over a wide group of brands and identities.
PACKAGING MOODBOARD Interested in effective packaging that uses less waste, I took a lot of time looking at different sticker packaging and effective ways to lay out type on round surfaces.
PHOTO MOODBOARD Drawing inspiration from the New York sex scene, I found a collection of grungy soft porn pictures that would serve well under graphics or alongside graphics. This would serve as the inspiration for a lot of the application in my swatch cards and swatch posters.
INTERIORS MOODBOARD Interested in the young clientele, I wanted to build my collection’s interiors based on the spaces that these people live in. Moving into their first homes, these people are new art buyers, eclectic pairs, and frugal buyers.
Sketching 2017 For this phase, I fleshed out the most successful ideas from the first phase of sketches with an emphasis on scale playing up to the idea of domination. I also still played with geometric serifs and industrial grotesque type at this stage.
PACKAGING AND SWATCH BOOK SKETCHES 2017 For packaging, I wanted to reflect the mood of the overall brand as I had designed it. Give it a level of grunge or haphazard placement. Give the viewer the feeling it was a second thought, but still give it the visual appeal of the remainder of the brand. I decided to develop a set of die cut stickers.
In addition I built a set of swatch cards and color swatch posters, as my target audience are young people who like free posters that they can put on their walls. The cards will be used for actual application of studying color and the posters can be a fun freebie.
DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT I began by vectoring a few variations and layouts of DOM with equal size or more dominant Ds, etc. I also played with various styles, from industrial to a geometric serif to a grotesque style. I attempted stacking, vertically, slanting, playing with weight, etc.
DESIGN CONT. After the original iteration of design I felt like there were a lot of weight and hierarchical issues. I found that the original had a lot of issues originating in the type design. I decided to pick one typeface (GT America) with a large family of weights and styles and then test out how the logo works in terms of weights and drama. I settled on using all black expanded then stacking the D on top of the O and M (similar to the original design). The subtext (“Interior Paints�) is set in medium slightly wider than the rest of the logo.
Final Logo Design My final logo is a grotesque logotype all upper case in GT America that shows a heavy amount of drama and alludes to domination and BDSM with the D sitting large and on top of the O and M.
GT America GT America (formerly known as GT Federal ) is a sans-serif typeface released through Grilli Type in 2016. It was designed by Noël Leu with additional work by Seb McLauchlan. The design draws inspiration from both Swiss and American grotesques. It’s a huge family that is available in five widths and seven weights, as well as a monospaced version.
GT America Expanded GT America (formerly known as GT Federal ) is a sans-serif typeface released through Grilli Type in 2016. It was designed by Noël Leu with additional work by Seb McLauchlan. The design draws inspiration from both Swiss and American grotesques. It’s a huge family that is available in five widths and seven weights, as well as a monospaced version.
Pantone: Black 6 XGC RGB: 19 29 40 CMYK: 88 0 0 100
Paper
Brand Assets For the brand assets I began with packaging die cut stickers. I then developed a set of color swatch posters and color swatch cards. Then the look book, designed as a magazine fold to show the viewer the direction and inspiration behind the collection.