Building the Brand
Building the Brand
Building the Brand Michael Grover
Foreward
Contents
In the Rhode Island School of Design Color studio, taught by Janet Fairbairn, my peers and I were given a final assignment of a large scope. Choose an object from nature, render it in gouache, create a logo and a b rand informed by the gouache studies. The process spanned five weeks, with one critique per week. For the purposes of this process book, I will speak as if this is an independent project. This affords me the luxury of being able to speak in the first person singular “I began my process by”, as opposed to “we were assigned to do such and such.” The first person plural is tricky to mesh with internal thoughts and explanations of one's own work. It will make the narrative much more straightforward to do away with “we.”
Preliminary Studies Logo Design Brand Applications
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Preliminary Studies What object will I base my brand on ? What will I learn from the object ?
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Preliminary Studies
Choosing the reference Choose an object from nature; the first task in this endeavor. This may seem a simple imperative, but it is not. if I choose an object that does not stimulate and inspire me, the sketches, the painting, the logo, the brand as a whole, may not be successful. The end product of this process, the brand, and everything in between hinged on this one choice. To ensure my choice was the correct one, I took several factors into account when searching for an object. The accessibility of the object. Do I have ready access to the object so I may study it at my leisure ? The associations an object has. Are there any biblical stories, legends, fables, etc. associated with the object ? The idea for a logo and brand can stem from these associations. The last significant factor I took into account was the potential to learn from the object. Will drawing and painting it challenge me ? I considered many objects, including sea shells, quartz rocks, and an owl. I was lucky enough to find a particularly regal looking red fox in the RISD nature lab. Red foxes are found in North America, Eurasia, and Africa. Due to their proliferation, most cultures have some sort of fable or myth that involves foxes. An example is the Teumessian Fox of Greek mythology, which was physically uncatchable. In the myth, the fox is pursued by Laelaps, a hound that could catch any prey. This created a logical paradox that confused Zeus, so he turned the Teumessian Fox and Laelaps to stone. At this point I was not sure what my brand would involve. Because of the rich cultural associations the fox has, I was confident that something would click when it came time to develop the brand.
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Preliminary Studies
Digital sketches After I chose the fox as the animal to build my brand on, I began sketching to get a feel for this animal’s form. Perhaps counter - intuitively, I decided to begin with digital sketches instead of sketching with charcoal or pencil. A few days painting fur, especially on the computer, offered quite the challenge. These sketches proved valuable, as the below profile view of the fox would later become the basis for the logo.
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Preliminary Studies
Charcoal sketches Drawing in charcoal was not an something I had done in a while. I spent a fraction of the time on these compared to the digital paintings, however I learned just as much about the fox, if not more. For all the conveniences digital media afford, the tactility of working in traditional media can not be replicated.
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Preliminary Studies
Painting in gouache To gain a greater understanding of the fox, I began a series of gouache studies, consisting of a realistic rendering, followed by a simplified rendering. On this page is a sketch, and an in progress capture of the realistic rendering.
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Preliminary Studies
The realistic rendering To the left is the final realistic rendering. Below is a photograph that approximately represents my view as I painted the fox from observation. The photograph does not represent the color of the fox I saw with my own eyes while painting. I took some liberties with the expression of the fox, which were not entirely conscious. The painted fox seems to have a defiance, a slyness in its eyes that is not present in the taxidermed reference. The brow in the painting is slanted downward, and the mouth slanted upward in comparison to the reference. Perhaps I was projecting my notions of what a fox is, as influenced by the culture surrounding me. I am not unsatisfied with this unintended expression; his countenance makes sense considering what my brand would become.
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Preliminary Studies
The simplified rendering In this simplified gouache rendering, each of the five colors is a product of two colors from the realistic rendering. The fox has a more neutral expression in this rendering, more faithful to the reference in that respect. I decided to be conservative with my palette, keeping colors roughly where they are on the fox, with no unnatural colors.
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Preliminary Studies
The vector fox After simplifying the fox in gouache, I rendered the painting in Adobe Illustrator as a vector. Vector assets object can be very valuable to a brand, because of their infinite scalability. Though this rendering is not incorporated into the yet unnamed brand, it very easily could be. Some minor changes were made during the leap from gouache to a digital file. The portion above his left eye was changed from orange to a warm gray, and various points were added to give the illusion of fur. Below is the same fox with elements surrounding it that imply depth through the use of color temperature.
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Logo Design What will my logo communicate about my company ? How will culture and my preliminary studies inform the logo design ?
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Logo Design
Finding the brand At the beginning of the project I had a vague idea that I wanted to design the brand for an apparel store. Despite this I struggled with other ideas and logos before settling. One idea was a law firm called Renard and Associates, or Renard & Renard. I scrapped this idea because designing logo applications for a law firm would have been boring. Though I liked these logo concepts, I did not know what kind of company they would be for, or how I would develop the brand. If anything the logos could have been for a tech startup company of some sort, but this is not the sort of brand I wanted to develop, so these logos had to be left behind.
Lucifox
Renard
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Logo Design
Inspiration and reference At this point I finally decided what kind of company my brand would be: a high end fashion store or designer brand. I considered the many highly coveted brands I often saw and browsed at my local outlet mall, such as Burberry, Tory Burch, Coach, D&G, etc. It is fascinating how a simple logo can fuel such pride, vanity, and jealousy. My goal was to capture that, to make a brand that could stand side by side with Louis Vuitton and Armani, a logo that could represent indulgence and desire. The patternability, if I may make up a word, of these designer fashion brands' logos was particularly interesting. Patternability was another factor I kept in mind when making my brand.
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Preliminary logo concepts When creating the logo, even before I knew what it was for, I had a certain story in mind. In the biblical story of Samson, the character comes up with a strangely complicated way of taking revenge against his enemies. “And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.� This very inhumane image of foxes tied tail to tail stuck with me. I wonder if the Mozilla Firefox logo was inspired by the same story. The flames did not make it into my final logo, but the pairing of foxes by the tail did make it.
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300 FOXES VULPES
Logo Design
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Logo Design
Final logo and variations Finally the name of the company was decided to be Renard, which means “fox” in French. I imagine if this brand were real, it would have been founded by a French designer named Renard, who decided to use foxes in his logo because his name means fox. The typeface used in the logotype is Didot, which was chosen to accentuate the elegance and high - end nature of the brand. The delicate serifs echo the thin outline of the fox. Though the figures are tantalizingly close to the mating position, which for foxes is back-to-back, the pair nonetheless maintains their stoic poses. Despite facing in the opposite directions, the foxes acknowledge each others' presence by intertwining their tails; asserting that they posses one another. This dichotomy between lust and modesty reflects what fashion is about. High end fashion serves lust by being designed to excite the opposite sex of the wearer, and at the same time serves modesty by covering the body. This interpretation of the logo is a far cry from the inspiration, Samson tying foxes tail-to-tail and setting them on fire, but it fits the brand much better and is more humane. The white background is the preferred version of the logo, but when the need arises, there are other versions of the logo to choose from. One for when the logo is on a black field, and one for when the logo is on a gray or colored field. The fox on the left is black and the fox on the right is white no matter the background color or which fox is outlined. Having several versions of the logo allows it to appear in a wide variety of contexts. Scalability is an important factor for a good logo. For this reason, the Renard logo has an alternate version for sizes smaller than one inch squared. In the small version, the outline has been enlarged and the form adjusted so that it can easily be identified.
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Brand Applications How will my logo serve the Renard brand ? How far can I push the plausibility of Renard ?
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Brand Applications
Harmonious logo For an effective logo It is should have a version that is only form, no color, no gradients. Renard's primary logo fulfills this requirement, however but there are instances in which a colored logo is appropriate. To determine the palette of the colored variation of the Renard logo, colors from the original gouache painting were sampled. The first color of the palette to be chosen was orange, because most foxes are. Any hue other than orange would seem unusual, and the Renard brand is not one that would challenge nature by coloring a fox bright green. A darker orange-brown was chosen to facilitate the gradient on the foxes. For a harmonious color scheme, I chose to include blue. Though it is hard to find, there is blue in the original gouache painting these colors were sourced from. The grayish-blue is one stroke in the fox's right ear (our left). From this grayish-blue, a saturated blue and dark blue to serve as the background were chosen. The saturated blue is not used in this logo, but is used elsewhere in the palette of the Renard brand.
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Brand Applications
The Renard Check Using the palette from the harmonious logo, I made the Renard Check pattern. Renard having its own unique pattern was inspired by Burberry and their Burberry Check pattern. Whenever people see that pattern and color palette, people think Burberry. I believe the Renard Check would have the potential to gain the same prestige, if Renard was a real company.
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Brand Applications
Renard scarf The Renard Check can be used for innumerable accessories such as pocket squares, ties, scarves, and umbrellas. The pattern can also be used for the interior lining of winter coats, briefcases, gift boxes, and as a backdrop in advertisements and the Renard website. I chose to realize a few of the possibilities to show how adaptable this pattern can be, and how it can become synonymous with the brand Renard. As numerous as the applications are, they were somewhat limited by what accessories I had on hand. For my purposes, I only used nondescript accessories, so that I would not be stealing any creative flourishes another brand may have used. I also used only accessories that had a solid color, because patterned accessories are considerably more difficult to Photoshop a new pattern on to. On this scarf, the Renard Check serves as a standin for the logo. If the Renard logo were to be on the scarf, it would be too small and subtle to be visible in promotional material such as this. The photograph to the right gave me an excuse to model clothing. This photo was taken by Tom Zhou before I manipulated the image. In addition to applying the pattern to the scarf, which was originally gray, I desaturated the image to emphasize the color of the scarf.
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Brand Applications
Renard handkerchief Zoe Matthewson was the model for this photograph. Like me, she does not own many fancy accessories that the Renard Check could be applied to. This particular accessory is a rag for cleaning eyeglasses, but in the context of this promotional material for Renard, it operates as a handkerchief. My model Zoe is embodying the "whatever" attitude models often seem to use in promotional material for the brands I drew inspiration from. Because Renard has a men's and a women's clothing department, I made sure to have promotional material portraying both genders.
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Brand Applications
Bag and boxes I turned to computer generated imagery to create the bag and two gift boxes for the Renard brand. This afforded me a greater level of control over the lighting, and the ability to make small changes to the objects without having to remake them from scratch. For this process the programs Maya and Keyshot were used. I have never used Keyshot before this project, so it was an interesting learning experience that will be useful for future projects. Rendering objects on the computer is very liberating, because there are no physical or cost constraints, and adjustments can be made easily. For example, the sizes of each element can be adjusted at any time. This is of course not possible with physical objects, one would have to remake them. Multiple adjustments were made to the render in Photoshop, for example, the logo and type were added. I added the Renard check to the bottom part of the large box, to add visual interest to the box, and make it unique to the Renard brand. I did consider making the box simply white, with only the logo on it. This would be simple and elegant, like I want the brand to be, but it would be a little to boring. The Renard Check is subtle enough not to break the elegance of the monochrome top of the box. The material the handles for the bag are made out of semitransparent plastic, rigid enough so that the handles stand up as they do in this rendering. The braid pattern echoes the way the foxes in the logo's tails intertwine. Though it is not pictured in this rendering, I would imagine that certain objects would be packaged with tissue paper that bears the Renard Check pattern.
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Brand Applications
Gendered brand Many apparel stores have different identities for clothing made for men and clothing made for women, for example Topshop and Topman. It seemed useful for my brand to have this distinction too. The distinction also makes it clear that Renard caters to both men and women. The two genders also allowed me to take advantage of the two foxes in my logo, characterizing the foxes as a mates.
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Brand Applications
Dimensional logo Having recently become enamored with 3D printing, I decided to turn my logo into a three dimensional model that could be printed to be used for many applications. The dimensional logo could be a belt buckle, a sign in front of the store, a tag on merchandise, etc. It can also be used as part of promotional material. Giving dimensionality to the logo allows the intertwining of the tails to be pushed further, and become more realistic. Making a logo look like it exists in the real world makes the brand feel more real, despite there being no actual Renard apparel company. Ultimately I did not print it the model, but I may some day.
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Afterword I am very satisfied with how the logo and the Renard brand as a whole turned out. Renard will serve as a good platform for me to build upon in the future, a test bed for me to practice on. A website, print and animated advertisements, billboards, an ios application, and so on. Best of all, Renard is all my own. I will not have to depend on other entities for something to design for. For me Renard can also be a gateway to mediums beyond graphic design. Perhaps I may design some apparel for the brand, I have been wanting to take the class Shoe Design in Italy. If people can stumble upon Renard in my online portfolio and believe it is a real brand until they find out they can't buy anything from it, I will have succeeded. Renard can modularly be expanded upon for years; as I grow as a designer, so too will Renard. It could even become a real brand some day (probably not). This may seem grandiose, but I am just so proud of this project, and had a terrific time working on it. I am not ready to abandon the Renard brand.
Colophon Typefaces: Gotham Book, Didot Printed with Epson Artisan 1430 Epson premium presentation paper matte Models : Michael Grover Zoe Mathewson Additional Photography: Tom Zhou Programs used : Adobe Creative Suite CC Autodesk Maya 2015 Luxion Keyshot 2014 RISD Color Jan Fairbairn Designed and written by Michael Grover