Probe
Prescribe
Brief Elmwood
Progress
Present
Development Book Collaborators:
Joel Burden
Design Direction
The design direction for the brief was that the brand would be a strongly branded budget alternative, to the faux up-market dog kennels available. I looked into strong budget brands as a start point. The brands I looked at aimed to to be honest with the customer. The brands are strong and high impact due to their simple no nonsense aesthetic.
The branding and ads focus on clarity and simplicity in order to communicate clearly with the consumer. They use easily identifiable colours and bold sans serifs to produce this clarity. The use of white space in the ads and branding helps to produce a more budget style aesthetic.
Logo Development
I started to develop the logo from the concept that was generated. The brand was formed from a strong concept as a foundation. Joel and I spent extra time holding back and not going initially with our gut. We worked the concept through to come up with more unexpected response.
Logo I started to develop a logo by picking one route and following it through. I will get feedback from Joel to see whether it should be taken further or in another direction.
I began to develop a visual based on the typeface Limerick. I am unsure at this stage whether these is the right way to go. We are looking at a budget and no nonsense dog hotel. I think this could be too ‘budget’ looking. With this brief I may have to put all reservations aside and go with what looks right for the brand, and not what looks good to me personally.
Further Development
I changed the typeface to a strong Sans Serif that reminded me more of the IKEA budget aesthetic. I settled on using an italic of the same font. I felt that this reduced the contrast that a script would do and that it fowed better to the eye.
I wanted to see what the typeface would look like on a poster to see if it worked as a statement piece on a poster. The typeface was bold enough to hold it’s own on a poster, however I still would like to explore some illustration with this brief. If only as a decoration. I played with the idea of using dog tooth check as an element to the branding. I think this may be too much to be used across all the branding elements, but may work nicely on uniforms and inside of packaging.
Final Logo
The final logo took the form of a basic and clear Sand Serif. Sharp Sans Extra Bold was used for the logo and he Bold for Sub-Titling. The body copy was to be written in Sharp Sans Book to create a visual consistency.
Creating Products
I started to put the logo on a range of appropriate products. It was imperative that I understood the business of dog kennels so that I could create apporpriate visuals and project more innovative solutions in the right direction.
I started applying the logo to a range of visual outcomes that would be appropriate to the proposal. I started with basic but essential stationary appropriate for a Dog Kennel. These were a business card, invoices, and forms appropriate for dog admittance.
To reinforce the budget aesthetic of the dog hotel I wanted to use Half Tone images, which have connotations to budget reprographics. I felt these were an appropriate and cheaper way of image making which would mean that they were appropriate to reproduce in print.
I wanted the logo to have an editable dimension that would hint at hand written type. I used my own hand writing as an example for the proposal.
I put the writing in the correct cmyk values to fit in with the branding.
The deliverables started to come together. I used Live Surface Context to mock up the deliverables. Due to the proposal nature of the brief I was advised by the director of the competition to not spend money producing the products, so I felt that this was the best way to mock up the responses. I tried to look at obvious products and then more obscure but still appropriate products. As you can tell from the images I managed to carry the tone and branding over a varied product range.
The posters I created were based in humour. The posters came up from a range of phrases I had written down before the concept that seemed to become appropriate as this brief developed. The posters are copy led which injects an important human factor into the concept and visual.
The rest of the deliverables came together very naturally. The concept seemed to feed itself, and I feel this is the first brief that has truly worked in this way. The visuals take care of them selves once the concept and visual language has been pinned down. I feel that the concept is strong and that the visuals are perfect for the concept and target audience. Due to the fact they are so simple there is nothing else to take away, and nothing more that needs to be added.