Branding
My Process
To begin a branding project, it’s important to understand the purpose and ethos of a brand. Once the intended emotions and tone of the potential brand are established, I put together color palettes. If there are no specific colors given to me by a client, I try to match the colors with the intended tone of the brand. Both of the following examples are playful and welcoming, and that is reinforced in the vivid colors utilized. For typography, I either contrast or match the tone of the colors. For the website design, the typefaces used focused on legibility, but with an element of uniqueness to tie it in with the colors.
From there, I like to add in assets and motifs for the brand to create not only a set identity, but characteristics of the brand. Andy’s Firewood has a friendly tone that is strengthened in its stickers that also function as opportune taglines and slogans. Throughout the process, I mix and match ideas to get the best combination for that step, but in the end I am settled with the design when I can easily understand the intonation of the brand just by looking at the guidelines.
Kendahl Skomski Photography also started following my branding process. We decided on a few tone words, Relaxed, Humorous, Casual, and Straight-forward. It was principal for Kendahl’s site to reflect the relationship she wishes to create with her client. She wanted a balance between fun and casual and a professional demeanor. The color palette consists of near neon colors and neutrals, this mirrors the client-photographer relationship Kendahl wishes to create. Choosing typefaces, I took into account the legibility of paragraphs that would be on various pages for the body copy and a clean, yet fun, font for the typographic logo.
For this project’s assets, I created a page of illustrations that reflected Kendahl’s interests. The display of her interests creates a friendly demeanor on the site. A main point in Kendahl’s notes was to make the viewer comfortable, like they are working with a friend, if they book a shoot.
This project was enjoyable to create a real brand from nothing, however it was my first time branding with a client. There are a few things that I would do differently or that I think would look better another way, but compromising or deciding to do what Kendahl prefers does not take away from the look of the brand overall.
This is a hypothetical project for the excess firewood my dad has. While following the steps of my branding process, I took into account the best practices for burning firewood. Therefore, the stickers have various taglines related to the environmentally safest way to transport and utilize firewood, but also serve as a form of marketing. The combination of these two purposes provide a personality for the brand, showing that Andy’s Firewood cares about environmental safety and reaching customers.
Most firewood signs are seen on the side of the road for drivers to see when they speed past. I wanted the colors to be bright to call attention to passersby, so that they could easily spot the place to stop. In this project, I paired an illustrated typeface with a sans-serif, Auster, which has a bit of added flair on the corners. I find this matched well with the points in the fire illustration, but not too illustrative to not work as a clean font.
