OUGD602 - Studio Brief 2: Self Branding

To start the new year I decided that I wanted to update my self branding. This is something that I have been playing around with over summer while creating a portfolio, however I haven't got anything I am entirely happy with.

I am creating a portfolio so I can send a printed copy to design studios/agencies that I would like to gain placements at. Having a strong self branding is an important element to this as it is something that needs to be consistent across the whole portfolio and faultless. Without strong branding it doesn't put me in good stead when there will be others also sending portfolios.


End of second year branding:

The branding that I did for myself last year wasn't something that I am particularly happy with. Although I worked quite hard at it and covered a lot of bases, the overall result wasn't something that I think represents me as a designer. I feel that I created the designs out of character and not thinking about how I wanted to put myself across.

I think that one of the main issues is that I wanted to have something consistent across all my branded material, so created a pattern, which in the end wasn't really beneficial or representative. It worked well in context, but not in representing me. The colour choice is also something that didn't help. The choice of blue and red together created a pretty playful and bold set of stationary, and while I obviously have no problem with this, the final outcomes as a group seemed to represent a bolder, more playful and cartoonish look than I am as a designer.

The stock choice was also something that is completely not what I would use in other design works. I am usually using smooth and flat paper, whereas I used watercolour paper for all this branding, which is quite rough and distinctive. It is a nice stock, but as I said, it's not representative of me as a designer and the kinds of work I create.

Something that I was keen on doing in this branding was having a symbol that worked on its own and was recognisable. I created an arrow - a symbol of moving forward - with an 'E' in it. Although I like the concept of this, I don't think I executed this as well as I could have done. It doesn't look sophisticated or that refined. It's quite large and hard to work with.

Leading on from this idea of a symbol at the beginning of the summer I worked on the idea of creating a symbol which worked much more easily in any kind of context, but still contained my initials.

The above is the most refined idea I got. Its simple, slightly abstract, but it does show both my initials, and 'E' and an 'L'. The outline makes it a bit bolder and gives it all a bit more space to breath when put on media with other images/text. It is quite bold because of the simplicity so it has no trouble standing out.

The issue that I have with it is that it is a bit blocky and seems quite imposing, much like the previous design. This is something that I wanted to get away from. I wanted something a bit more sophisticated and thought about.

New Logo:

While I kept that design for the summer, I started working on a new logo over the past week. Something which I had been thinking about was that I wanted a symbol that worked alongside my name instead of being two separate logos. I do want to keep with the red colour for the branding, but a slightly off red so it's a bit softer and not as bold.

I also decided to explore the idea of using a lodge in some way. It's not an entirely common last name and it does have an association to the lodge cabins, so this is something that I wanted to explore and only use if  I did it well.

I tried out a few ideas of using a shadow of a lodge cabin, but decided that it didn't look right at all so went down a much simpler route in simplifying it to an upwards arrow shape. With these sharp edges I decided on using an uppercase font for my name, deciding on the font 'Montserrat'. This is a free commercial font, one which is often used as a free alternative to 'Gotham'. It is also a font which I have been working with a lot over the summer in design works that I have been doing.

Layout ideas:

I got a bit of feedback from Charlie and she agreed with me in the fact that the middle design (symbol on the left, text next to) was the best layout. The others looked a bit disjointed.

While I am happy with it, I don't think it is right. I want something that works more cohesive. I think that because of the slanted top to the symbol, it makes the spacing uneven when next to the text, and something like that is what would get on my nerves every time I saw it.

I decided on trying replacing the 'O' in 'Lodge' with the symbol.

I'm actually surprised at how well this works. I didn't think it would work that well, but I do like it, especially when the symbol is in red and the text is in grey.

I decided that this was the logo design I was going to go with and applied it to my portfolio.

Finished portfolio:

Overall I'm happy with my portfolio. It has taken a good couple of weeks of adjustment to get right, but right now I think that the branding is consistent and the layouts are simple and show off each element of the work I have done, showing where my strengths are.

What I need to work on now is creating all the rest of the material for my self promotion, such as business cards. I would like to have some business cards to send out with the portfolio so that the person has something to hold onto.