Brief two was a great brief for
me. I was a little anxious at the start, because other than the self branding brief
for PPP last year, I had never designed a logo for a client/brand before, and
next to no experience of working within brand restrictions. It was a massive
learning curve for me, especially in gaining experience of communicating with a
client and defining specific brand requirements. I knew straight away after
selecting my Kickstarter project that I needed to design something bespoke; something
that honestly reflected the brand. Fortunately, this allowed me to be true to
my artistic background, experimenting with media such as paint and ink and
collaging to get my ideas flowing.
My research for this brief was
mainly secondary; this can be put down to time constraints and time management.
The internet is a very useful resource as it is constantly updated and current,
and I saw it as an effective research tool for this project. I used inspiration
websites such as Pinterest, ItsNiceThat and BauBauHaus to fire up some
inspiration. I tried to remain very specific in my visual research, in terms of
the context of the brand and all that could be associated with it. I looked in
depth at existing brands that have the same name as the farm I was designing
for. I did this to see exactly how other designers tackled the theme of black
sheep. I then went onto look at a range of farm logo designs from across
America, the UK and Europe. This was useful in giving me inspiration. I noticed
that a lot of farm logos shared similar design conventions and there were
definitely running themes. For example, I noticed a large number of farm logos
incorporated rounded sans serif, quite condensed typefaces. They also looked
processed, edited to seem grungy/weathered or just ‘organic’.
I began by getting my primary
ideas down onto paper, sketching designs out using marker pens, black drawing
ink, acrylic paints, thick card and collaging techniques. This was really fun
and refreshing way to approach a brief for me. I also found some marbelled
paper at home and incorporated that into my initial design development.
Once I had generated a
satisfactory number of ideas, I asked for feedback from my course mates. People
said they really liked my vision to keep the designs illustrative rather than
pure vectors. They said I could have also considered using hand rendered
typography to compliment my illustrations. I took all of the feedback on board
and used it to push the ideas forward.
I took the opportunity to contact
the manager of the Kickstarter project personally via email. I was nervous
about this, but hours after sending the first message I received a reply. I
simply asked the ‘client’ if he had a vision for how he would like the logo to
look. He was very helpful and gave me a number of pointers to work on. Opening
up this dialogue with the client was very good for me in terms of building up
my experience.
Talking with the client ultimately
shaped my final design decisions.. After finishing the logo design I shifted my
attention to the collateral. Here I wanted to keep things relevant and fresh to
the modern consumer of farm products. So I decided to create a customer loyalty
card and an advertisement poster. I wanted it to be fun and playful yet
functional.
Overall I am very pleased with the
amount of effort and time I dedicated to exploring analogue media/techniques. I
definitely stuck to my creative roots during this brief, not feeling the need
to conform to contemporary trends. I feel my final design answer the brief and
the clients desires successfully.
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