VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.” —Paul Rand
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BRAND OVERVIEW 09
Who We Are 11
Inspiration
BRAND OVERVIEW 17
Old Identity 11
Brand Personality
LOGO DEVELOPMENT 29
Initial Sketches 43
Refined Sketches 51
Digital Sketches 57
Look A-Likes
FINAL LOGO 63
The Reveal 65
Where To Next?
BRAND OVERVIEW
09
Who We Are 11
Inspiration
WHO WE ARE
American Apparel mission is to support fair employment practices and provide better opportunities for all working people.
BRAND HISTORY American Apparel was a vertically integrated North American apparels company that has made many headlines over the years for all the wrong reasons. American Apparel was started by its flamboyant founder Dov Charney in Montreal in 1989. In 1997 company moved to LA and eventually grew to peak at having 250+ stores worldwide in 2011. The company embraced “Made in the USA,� mentality and publicly condemned usage of sweatshops. American Apparel is mostly known for its provocative and controversial advertising campaigns. The company designs, creates and prints its own advertisements. Since 2017, American Apparel is owned by Gildan and one can see the drastic shift in the marketing and the overall mood and tone of the brand. Today, the company has closed all physical stores and sells its products through online only.
BRAND OVERVIEW
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
09
INSPIRATION
For us to come up with a good brand guide, we gathered inspirations from renowned brands from all around the world.
PRODUCT RED Logo dimension plotting
VANTIV Primary brand color inspiration
DEUTSCHE BANK Logo lockup inspiration
THE NUEVA SCHOOL Graphic elements Do’s and Dont’s
FORD Standards guide layout style
TIGERMILK Extended logotype for inspiration
BRAND OVERVIEW
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
11
CONCEPT RESEARCH
17
Old Identity 19
Brand Personality
OLD IDENTITY
Old American Apparel logo exhibited Helvetica in Black with a tight spacing.
CONCEPT RESEARCH
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
17
BRAND PERSONALITY
While in the early stage of this rebranding initiative, it was clear to us that American Apparel can stand for so much more than just cool and trendy clothes. That we now live in a world where enough people care about the well being of others. After having this new core of the brand firmly established, we came up with three new keywords for the logo inspiration.
ETHICAL EMPOWERMENT SPIRIT
CONCEPT RESEARCH
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
19
ETHICAL It is so much easier to be transparent about doing the right thing than being shady about doing the wrong thing.
CONCEPT RESEARCH
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
21
EMPOWERMENT Great leadership is not about trying to grab and hold the power, but it is about having the ability to empower others.
CONCEPT RESEARCH
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
23
SPIRIT No matter where you come from or where you stand, everyone should have an opportunity to live out the life they dreamed of.
CONCEPT RESEARCH
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
25
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
29
Initial Sketches 43
Refined Sketches 51
Digital Sketches 57
Look-A-Likes
INITIAL SKETCHES
Initial sketching phase of the new logo began with creating three unique camps that embody the brand keywords.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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29
CAMP 01—ETHICAL
This phase of sketching is based on the idea and feel of being ethical. For a company, being ethical is about being fair and providing all the opportunities for its workers to succeed both in life and work.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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CAMP 02—EMPOWERMENT
How can we visualize empowerment? We thought about giving someone a voice. We then pictured something being uplifted and rising. These thoughts were implemented in this phase of the logo sketching.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
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LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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CAMP 03—SPIRIT
The first thing that comes to my mind when I picture the word “spirit” is something positive and warm. Being hopeful and having a good attitude about the situation that you are in. Then having this sense of togetherness to know that you are not alone. These sketches attempt to reflect all these thoughts.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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REFINEMENT
A painstaking process of sketching out dozens of groups of logos eventually resulted in several logo designs that were selected to further explored and refined.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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SKETCHES REFINED
During the refinement process, I narrowed down the camps to only focus on sketches based on ethical and empowerment. This new hybrid refined camp eventually gave me few logo designs that we could further develop with.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
49
DIGITAL SKETCHES
Once all the drafts, sketches and refinements were done, it was time to bring these designs to life. Digital sketch prototyping is a delicate process that takes time but you can see the realistic appearances of the design prototypes.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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DIGITAL REFINED
Once we narrowed down to few design drafts, we decided to go with the logo design that is symmetric with having the letters “A” both top and bottom. Thick lines were implemented to exhibit stability. Symmetric appearance of the letter “A” exhibit equality.
LOGOTYPE
WORDMARK american apparel
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
american apparel
55
LOOK-A-LIKES
An accidental plagiarism is still a plagiarism. We did a through search to make 100% sure that our new logo is not in use already.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
57
LOOK-A-LIKES RESEARCH
These logos show similar characteristics of our logo. We just wanted to keep in mind these designs do exist and these designs were not even referenced a bit during our design process.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
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59
FINAL LOGO
63
The Reveal 65
Where To Next?
THE REVEAL
The new logo design is symmetric with having the letters “A” both top and bottom. Thick lines were implemented to exhibit stability. Symmetric appearance of the letter “A” exhibit equality. The letterform in a sense has the opposing characteristics of logo to represent people.
FINAL LOGO
GRAPHIC SYMBOL
WORDMARK
These thick lines of letter “A� exhibit strong foundation and stability.
Our custom letterform has symmetric characteristics to compliment the logo. The additional characteristics include various geometric shapes that can get perceived. We wanted this letterform to symbolically represent the people behind the curtains of our strong organization.
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WHERE TO NEXT?
The logo is ready to go out and meet our employees and customers to show what new American Apparel now stands for. Previously, American Apparel was rarely in spotlight for positive things. Instead of putting the spotlight on flashy and controversial advertising campaigns, we now want to direct these spotlights to these hard working people in the background. Rebranding and relaunching of the new American Apparel brand essentially starts with the introdcution of our new logo. All our logos and sub logos for different subsidiaries attempt to maximize the visual recollection of the audience.
FINAL LOGO
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
65
TYPOGRAPHY
This book is typeset in Favorit Typeface in various weights and sizes.
PHOTOGRAPHY unsplash.com pxhere.com
DISCLAIMER
This is a student project only, produce for a class assignment. No part of this book or any other part of the project was produced for commercial use.