Dba boards

Brief #08 — DBA Capital North

Rinesh Mistry

Context

Target Audience

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OUGD603

The government has recently revealed a strategy to develop the North of England as a second economic capital in Britain to redress the economic balance across the country and to compete on the world stage. They are calling this strategy ‘Northern Powerhouse’. The government believes that, by improving the transport infrastructure through HS3, connecting Leeds to Manchester, and tapping into the huge potential of the North of England, the North will become the globally significant economic force it has always promised to be. Great global cities have many attributes - access to a deep pool of human capital, great jobs and businesses. Fast and effective transport connections. Strong universities and hospitals, colleges and schools. They have the entertainment, the green spaces, the housing, culture and sport that makes for a good lifestyle.

Brief

The target audience is very broad - everybody and anybody, in the UK and abroad.

We need to spread the word about what a fantastic place this is to do business, to invest in and visit. An area equal to London and major European cities in influence and opportunity.

Deliverables

Extended Practice Submission

To brand the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ and create awareness of it’s many and varied Attributes to the rest of the world. There’s still a lot of uncertainty around the detail of how a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ will manifest itself, however for the moment let’s assume the four cities that head up the ‘Powerhouse’ will be Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull which creates a nice neat line across ‘the North’. The idea requires a name and a brand, so that the world understands that this is a significant single entity. After a ‘consultation process’ with all the key stakeholders the name ‘Capital North’ has been selected - combining purpose and place. It’s easy to remember and recall.

This brief was a collaboration with Dan Everitt, Bobby Jones & Tristan Currie.

1 x PDF Presentation of Concept and & Rebrand which included: 1 x Logo and concept design 1 x Poster Design 1 x Extra Deliverable

Brief #08 — DBA Capital North

Rinesh Mistry

OUGD603

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1 - Logo & Visual System Research

#02

As this was ideally an identity and branding brief, research into branding and logo design was crucial. Due to the nature and scale of the brief the use of a visual and logo system was something which I thought would have been a good idea to implement into the design.

2 - Iconography

Extended Practice Submission

Research into the use of icons and iconography within branding was another thing which I thought would have been a good thing to look into and possibly include in the designs. I figured that the use of icons would be a good way to show different sectors and areas, which in this case would be areas of the cities or train station.

Brief #08 — DBA Capital North

Rinesh Mistry

OUGD603

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4 - Initial Designs

Initially as there were 4 of us working in the group, we all did our own designs. I had aimed to design something which utilised the shapes of the county’s which were going to be part of this Northern Powerhouse.

I had also attempted to utilise the actual path which the HS3 train would take across the cities as a baseline to design from as you can see from the images above.

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5 - Visual Developments

Extended Practice Submission

Moving on from the initial designs, I had started to do some developments into posters.

These did not turn out as strong as I had initially hoped, this was mainly due to the actual logo designs not being strong enough.

Brief #08 — DBA Capital North

Rinesh Mistry

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OUGD603

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Concept

After a few crits on the designs we had all done and one from the guys at DBA we sat down and decided that we needed to choose one design and refine it.

The design we chose in the end was one which Dan had initially designed.

The concept behind the design we chose was that the flag would be the icon of the North. Flags have traditionally represented power, significance and generally hold a lot of meaning behind them.

The colours which have been used within the main flag and the individual ones have each been derived from the counties that the cities are in, further emphasising the cities themselves and also ties in with the 4 sectors which the Capital North would be representing, culture, finance, education and lifestyle.

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Extended Practice Submission

6 - Final Solutions

The final logos we chose have a fairly minimal design, and we chose it because of this quality. We wanted something which would be easily recognisable as opposed to something which was too busy or cluttered and would almost put you off looking at it for prolonged periods of time.

There would be a single flag for each of the cities along with an overall one which would represent them all as a whole, or as the Capital North.

Brief #08 — DBA Capital North

Rinesh Mistry

OUGD603

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7 - Final Deliverables

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The final deliverables for this brief were the logos, posters, train and staff mock ups, taxi mock ups and mobile phone app design.

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Extended Practice Submission