100 Marques 1 Week Brief

My Marque at the moment is simple but flawed as it doesn’t say anything about me as a designer or what I may do. I made it during school so that that I could use a watermark on all of my designs for my Instagram page.

We were not just given one project to get on with but also given a shorter week-long project to push us to be productive quickly and come up with ideas faster. I really like the idea of this brief to create 100 marques that we could use to brand ourselves. Branding yourself is the hardest thing a designer will ever have to do, it is easy to pick apart someone else’s brand and redesign that however when looking at your own brand and identity it suddenly becomes so much harder!

I definitely feel that this brief will push and improve me massively because I think last year I was very quick to pass over the ideation stage and if I had an idea I did not challenge it, I just went with one of the first ones I came up with. Often your first idea is never your best one. The longer you take during the ideation period the better the outcome will be.

This project is also really good for me because it will challenge my perfectionism that the logos aren’t all going to be perfect and that to get to 100 in one week that are all different you have to draft some up that you might automatically hate or think were too rushed but you have to get all your ideas out on the page I find instead of filtering them all through in your head and then just picking the best one that you have thought about before ever visualising it.

On Display Brief and Into

This is the first brief of the year and I am super excited about it because branding is something that I might look into taking up in the future and I really like how you can completely improve a company’s success by just how they appear and what they want to represent for the consumers.

This brief is a 6-week project that has a ton of outcomes from video, logos, app design and posters. I am excited because I feel that this is really going to push me to more creative than I have been before and home in on a range of skills to successfully fulfil the brief. It is super important for consistency in this project as you are making outcomes which just appear in a range of ways but should hold the same meanings and company ethos. This is going to be really important to get a firm understanding about what the brand should show and make sure I don’t create an attractive brand that doesn’t have any context or reasons behind any of the design.

The themes that we can choose from for this project are:

• Beyond Borders
• Brutalist Architecture
• Eat Me!
• Etymology
• Glitch

With these themes being slightly vague you are able to take this project in so many different ways.

There are a range of research links available to us to use to research more into these themes and the project itself. However, I also want to make a bigger effort this year to research resources myself and research and develop ideas a lot more. By doing this you often bring out your most creative side that creates ideas you wouldn’t have expected to make up.

History of Branding

Branding is something that has always interested me as an area of graphic design which I would love to go into after my degree is over. I find it really interesting how some companies have had so much success just because customers remember what thy stand for and their very unique brand which makes them stick out from the rest of the crowd.

Branding originated from when farmers would mark their stock with hot iron marks. This has continued to this day of marking animals however often will be done using paint instead. The process was always used to mark slaves hundreds of years ago and allowed something to be given an identity by its owner.

Then in the 30’s small shops where everything was local changed into Factories where a business could outsource their products and ship to many places. This allowed new thinking to emerge when looking at products and their company’s brand However this did not pick up fully until after the 40’s due to the world wars making the public often very frugal with money.

When TV’s came along this was a way in which companies could advertise their brand to the world and therefore every company started having brands with tag-lines, colour schemes etc to differentiate themselves from others.

Market Share = How the product does in its market

Mind Share = Brand Recognition, Awareness

USP – Unique Selling Point

ESP – Emotional Selling Point

 

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Books Recommendations

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These books were recommended to me by my lecturer and I think that I am going to have a look at buying them as I want to delve into more of the history of branding but also branding in general. Even though the internet is a great source of information I do feel that books hold a place of importance too.

What is Branding?

What is a brand?

An Organisations:

• Personality
• Beliefs
• Values
• Behaviour
• Attitude
• Aspiration

Branding is huge in a company’s success or failure. It is all about connecting with consumers on not just the product but the whole brand. For example, people don’t just buy an iPhone and that’s it. They buy into the brand of Apple and end up having MacBook’s, Apple Watches etc. Building a strong brand identity allows companies to expand into a range of ways and areas with the consumers following them. Your brand personality is important as you need to ensure you know how you want your consumers to see you as a brand and feel when they notice your services or products.

There are very stereotypical ways in which companies can brand themselves which will clearly tell customers what type of company or products you offer.

I haven’t really ever thought about how obvious some branding can often refer to a specific age group, gender or class. I don’t think this is good and sometimes the best branding can break these trends and easy routes. For example, child friendly fonts and colourful logos are ideal for youth clubs and teenager related brands however do all feminine products or their brands need to be pink or purple? I think bucking these trends in this day and age is really important and if you can create a brand that is powerful enough to stand on its own it does not need stereotypical colours and fonts to fit into a category of brands.

USP = Unique Selling Points some examples:

• Emotive
• Environmental
• Science
• Cost
• Accessibility

I also have learned that when thinking about a company’s brand that product, identity and marketing all play equal parts and need to align to ensure there is a cohesive and strong brand throughout the brand.

An example of a brand that I have researched that I feel fit this is Red Bull. Not only do they sell drinks, but they also take part in sporting events and host music festivals! Their brand reaches all kinds of audiences and impact all kinds of people over the world. They thrive on taking risks and winning. The motto ‘Red Bull gives you wings’ I feel shows this by saying that their drink allows people to win and do stunts that no one else thought possible. They also ensure the same marketing and colour schemes are used throughout all of their products and product placement with sporting events.

I was reminded of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which I learned during school and how it applies to branding. Only moving up the ladder once you have completed the things below it. Branding can be applied to this as the ground works and basics must be finished first before you start branching out to other products and services.

I have learned how the Logo is a huge symbol of a company however only a small amount of work alongside everything else that must be managed to ensure the brand is consistent throughout. It will be what the consumers recognise and ties them to the brand but may not show initially all of the identity of the brand and what they stand for.

Welcome to Second Year

It is crazy how quickly first year went and I now find myself starting second year of university. Soon enough I will be half way through university and I will need to start to plan and think about what I would like to do after my degree is finished.

After a crazy summer finishing up year 1 it was really good to take a break from creativity for a couple of weeks. However, I soon found myself doing freelance work for people I know and starting a couple smaller pieces for myself when I had fully recharged my batteries. I am really looking forward to this year and after applying what I have learned so far this summer to a range of work I cannot wait to learn more and improve my skills.

It is shaping up to be a really busy start to term one with two projects being launched on Tuesday however I am looking forward to the challenge of multiple things at once as this will be an accurate reflection of what real client work is like and I have experienced this a slight bit with my own freelance work too.