Re-Brand / Colour

I thought that ice cream colours could work well with this logo. While I want to choose colours I like, I think its important not to exclude a male audience by making this logo too feminine, so I will try to stay away from pastel pinks!

I've got some ice cream images from google, and have been picking some colours out of them. I've also been looking at the 'Pantone pastel coated' colours, the only problem here being that I won't be able to print these, so I need to choose CMYK colours.

I've been finding sets of two colours that work together. I've thought about the idea of not sticking to one particular colour scheme, but that the logo could feature different colours on different things, such as my blog compared to my twitter.

Here are some more of the colour choices. I really like the one shown at the moment.

I thought about the idea of using just one colour, and then a tint of this colour.

Here are some of my favourite colour choices.

I tried including a texture behind the background, to make reference to my design practice, where the use of materials is important to my designs, but I thought this would just look too much, so kept it simple.

These are my favourite colours, so I will use this as a logo.

Re-Brand / Logo

I had been unhappy with the previous branding I had for myself for a while, but especially after my portfolio reviews, I realised that my branding was totally irrelevant to my style of work, and didn't look connected at all. After researching for my design context tutorial I also realised that my branding was not only not relevant to my design practice, but it wasn't even relevant to the things I have been researching. I really liked the font I had used for my previous branding, but other than that, I had designed it the way I had because thats how I thought it should look, rather than it being a true representation of me.

So, I started off by hand-drawing a few ideas, based on styles I had used previously.

As I was drawing these logos, I was asking others what they thought, and whether or not they represented my design practice.

This was my favourite logo design, but I thought this quick sketch was a little bit messy, so I have re-drawn it neatly, using guidelines, so that I can scan it in and vector it.

    

I then began to vector this logo, I wanted to get it perfect so spent a while working on it.

Some of the lines started out too thick and uneven, as you can see below, so I made sure everything matched.

At this stage I was quite unhappy with how the G and r connected, I thought it looked too fussy compared to the rest of the image. 

I decided to remove one of the swirls to see if this would work.

I then changed the 'r' as it looked unnatural the way it was.

At this stage, most of the lines were nearly even and I felt like I was nearly there.

As you can see here, I've edited the G, as it was too thick compared to the rest of the word.

The curl in the G didn't match the other curls, as this one was quite square, where the others were more circular, so I have edited this.

Here I have my final logo! After lots of edits and time spent perfecting this, I'm finally really happy. I now need to choose a colour scheme to work with it.

I've asked others what they think of this logo and they said it was a definite improvement on my last one, and much more relevant towards my work.

Portfolio Surgery Feedback

I had my portfolio surgery with Ben from the Beautiful Meme a few weeks ago but today I discussed my portfolio and personal branding with Andy, based on things that had been brought up in the last portfolio review.

Branding

- Keep the logo neutral in the portfolio, and monotone, so that it does not detract from the images

- Have a focus on materials with the business card as this is relevant to your work

- Make your own cards for the crafty feel, to get across your design identity

- Could create lots of different colour cards on different stocks so people can choose their favourite colour

- Find a more appropriate font to relate to the theme

- Could use embossing tools to get an interesting exciting design for cheap

- Try screen printing or applying foil

- Collect sample paper from different companies such as GF Smith, and then can print on to a variety of papers
- Only need the logo on one side, so theres more space for less info

Portfolio

- For the cover page in the portfolio, use the same stock as the business cards, so that the focus on materials is apparent straight away and everything is consistent

- Use a smaller pt size for the text

- Don't use justified text as it is hard to get right, some lines have only four words on where some the words are squashed together. Range left looks better

- For the Peacocks page, re-make the browser window template as parts are chopped off. And add a shadow. Each website featured needs to be in a window template. Could also mock up the website showing it on a mac.
- Reshoot photographs for sharper images
- Don't crop the images too much as you have done
- The headers for each project should be more discreet so they don't draw attention away from the work
- Text can run over images
- Each project could have a full page image, decide which image is the most important
- At the moment as each project seems to have four images of equal size which fight for attention, where it would be better to have 1 bigger and the others smaller
- Try layout with full bleed image with text on left side, and three images arrange in a grid on the right (Each projects grid should be consistent)
- Consider hierarchy of images - what should come first?
- When shooting packaging, get 3 sides in the shot, rather than just one birds eye shot
- Look at how Turnerduckworth shoot images
- Can use digital files of images when it is more appropriate
- Mock up products digitally if it would be neater
- Make sure that the images are lined up perfectly as some are out by a number of pixels
- You don't need to fill all of every page, make use of white space
- MCD - Take photographs of posters in context to show size. e.g. could place them on a wall then use this photograph as a full bleed DPS
- When taking photographs consider where the type would be placed
- Spread out projects, e.g. don't put two vector illustration projects together
- Make it obvious what the product is and how it works
- Include the YCN logo as a small image on the Peacocks page
- Only take perfect mock-ups to show the product as real as it can be
- Correct mistakes on photographs with photoshop
- Organise the products so that it makes sense
- To add a bit of shadow to an image on photoshop, go to selective colour, select white and add 1% to CMYK
- The background of each image should be the same colour
- Look at lovelystationery.com
- Make sure your project makes sense to someone who has never seen it before, and work out what you want them to notice.

For next tue -->

Task from Andy:
- Create a scamp layout for each project and an Indesign grid for how it could work

YCN Annual

Finally got my YCN annual with my work in it! It's such a lovely book, printed on to Fedrigoni paper, that will be great to show others and is a talking point about my work.

Fedrigoni Event

Fedrigoni

On Thursday evening a few of us went to the Fedrigoni White Lies exhibition, which was to launch a new range of 'Acroprint' paper. As print loving graphic designers this event was very exciting for us, and even better, we were given some samples of print.

The White Lies Promo Book is really memorable as not only is it well designed, with the use of gold foil on luxurious paper to give it a high quality keepsake finish, but it contains a humorous and clever concept. The exhibition was all about white lies designers have told to their clients.

I would love to use gold foil on some of my designs. This is something me, Beth and Baljeet were actually thinking about doing for our fashion brief. I like how it is just used for the outline of the text, this keeps the book looking classy, too much foil could have been a bit overwhelming.

Another thing I love is this gradient of the pink. Pink and gold are my favourite colours so this book is perfect in my eyes!

This is another Fedrigoni Sample Print, showing how the use of finishes such as spot colours and foiling can make a simple design stand out against a quality stock. As I really want to improve the professional presentation of my pieces, I want to start using better quality stock and taking more care with print finishes.

https://twitter.com/designproject_

Here are some photographs from the event, including the actual posters the event was based around, as well as lots of examples of how Fedrigoni papers have been used in books. The event was really inspiring and just what I needed in a few weeks that had been focused on dissertation writing! I now really want to screenprint gold.