17/4/2024- 29/5/2024 / Week 1 - Week 6
Song Yang/ 0355576
Advanced Interactive Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 2: Logo
INTRODUCTION
LECTURES
Lecture 4: Brand Ideals
1）Vision: It takes courage and visionary thinking to realize great ideas. Face-to-face communication is essential to understand and buy into the vision.
2）Meaning: Meaning is not created overnight, but is gradually formed over time. Designers need to translate meaning into unique visual forms and expressions that people can understand, spread and recognize.
3）Authenticity: It means having a clear sense of self and making decisions consistent with it. Brands that are personalized, memorable and authentic are more likely to win customer recognition.
4）Differentiation: Brands always have competition in the same business. Brands need to stand out through unique and distinctive visual differences.
5）Sustainability: Maintaining a long-term presence in a changing environment. Consumers feel reassured by familiar and reliable trademarks. Sustainability is achieved by sticking to core ideas over a long period of time.
6）Coherence: Brands should feel familiar to customers and produce expected effects. This ensures that the various parts of the brand fit together, building trust and loyalty.
7）Flexibility: Innovation requires brands to be flexible. Brands that embrace change need flexible brand identity systems to seize new opportunities in the market.
8）Commitment: Ensure that brand interactors have the motivation and dedication to drive brand success. Brands need to be protected, maintained and nurtured, achieved through ongoing management, monitoring standards and adherence to core values.
9）Value: Create measurable results to promote and sustain the brand. Pursuing sustainability expands the value conversation with consumers. Successful brands encourage employees to explore and expand their imaginations and build deep relationships with customers who seek connection, community and a greater cause.
Lecture 5: Positioning
Brand positioning is the process of establishing a specific place for your brand in the minds of your customers. This is also known as positioning strategy, brand strategy, or brand positioning statement.
"Developing a brand strategy is like drawing a map. Positioning is determining where you are on the map and what your goal is."
Goal
Create a unique impression of your brand in the minds of customers so that they can associate your brand with a specific product that stands out from competitors.
Types of Positioning Strategies
- Market Leadership:
- Strive to become the dominant leader in the market and outperform competitors.
- Invest a lot of time and money.
2. Niche Market:
- Focus on an underserved segment of a larger market.
3. Redefine the market:
- Make the competitor's advantages less important or less attractive.
- Only works if the product or service has an innovative element.
4. Explore new markets:
- Enter completely new market areas.
- The risk is that the brand may be imitated before it is established.
Key Questions to Develop a Positioning Strategy
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- Why is this important?
Seven Key Steps to Determining Brand Positioning
- Analyze your brand's current positioning: Understand the existing image of your brand in the minds of your customers.
- Identify key competitors: Find out your brand's main competitors.
- Research competitor positioning: Investigate how each competitor positions their brand.
- Compare and identify what is unique:Compare brand positioning to identify the brand’s unique strengths.
- Design a unique, value-based positioning concept: Formulate a unique and valuable positioning concept.
- Write a brand positioning statement: Express the brand’s unique positioning in clear, concise language.
- Validate the validity of the brand positioning statement: Test the positioning statement through market research and customer feedback.
Create a brand positioning statement
Answer the following questions:
- Target customers: What are the attitudinal and demographic descriptions of the target customer group the brand is trying to attract?
- Market definition: What are the categories and customer-relevant environments in which the brand competes?
- Brand promise: What is the most compelling benefit (emotional or rational) that the brand can bring to the target customer?
- Credibility: What is the strongest evidence that the brand delivers on its promise?
Based on these questions, form the following positioning statement:
“For [target customer], [company name] is the brand that delivers [brand promise] in [market definition] because only [company name] can provide [credibility].”
Tasks
Task 2A: Logo Research & Analysis
I analyzed the logos of 28 well-known brands and discussed them in detail from four aspects: logo type, color scheme, graphic elements used and printing style. The logo designs of these brands are highly recognizable and influential around the world, and their design strategies play a vital role in shaping their brand image.
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Fig 1.1 Screenshot of Logo Analysis Slides |
Task 2A: Logo Research and Analysis Slides - PDF
Task 2B: Logo Design
To decide on our brand and business, we were instructed to think of 3 alternative career choices. Some of the questions that we have to answer include:
but due to the tight time in class, I only wrote in detail about one career that was approved by the lecturer.
Once we have consulted our lecturer and chosen our business, we had to make 2 mindmaps.
- everything related to the business
- Include the brand name, its origin, and other words related to it.
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Fig 2.1 First Mind Map- Business |
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Fig 2.2 Second Mind Map- Brand Name |
Week 3 Sketches:
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Fig 3.1 Week 3 Sketches (1) |
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In the sketch of the third week, I created a meditating person. I thought its image was in line with the theme of healing the soul that my brand pursues. Then I tried to combine the image of the meditating person with other elements that fit my brand.
Week 4 Sketches:
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Based on the feedback from the third week, I realized that the logo design should be simple, and I began to try to create an impressive logo with simple lines.
Week 5 Digitalisation:
According to the feedback from the fourth week class, the instructor asked the students to choose excellent designs from each other. I digitized the four logos selected by most students and tried different ways to rationalize the wordmark space.
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Fig 4.1 Week 5 Digital Logo Designs |
Week 6
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Fig 5.1 Logo Space Rationalisation |
I started trying to reconstruct the side profile of the person to make it look smoother and more coordinated.
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| Fig 5.2 Patterns derived from final logo |
First pattern, I made a simple repetitive combination of the profiles, making each profile connected.
Second pattern，I cut out the heart part, first copied two hearts, flipped one of them horizontally, and connected the first part to form a combination. Then I copied this combination and used the same method to make it a combination of four hearts. I used a total of 8 connected hearts in one column, and there were four columns in total.
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Fig 5.3 Experimenting with colours |
I tried several color palettes that I thought would go well with my logo. I also researched colors that would highlight the therapeutic aspect of the business. After some visual research, I found that some common therapeutic colors include green, pink and purple, and green and yellow. Of these 4 choices, I felt that pink would work best for my brand logo and business.
GIF (B&W Draft)
GIF (Colour Final)
FINAL OUTCOMES
Task 2A: Logo Research & Analysis
Task 2B: Logo Design
FEEDBACK
Week 1: The idea of healing the soul with art is interesting, and the business has a strong unique selling point. In the next week, come up with 2 mind maps. The first mind map should be about the business itself, and the second mind map should be about the brand name.
Week 2：Some points in the mind map can be broken down and explained more comprehensively, rather than just summarizing them with one word.
Week 3：Continue to try different elements to explore, try different combinations to explore more possibilities
Week 4：Using Adobe Illustrator as you explore digitally, start making digital versions of your logos. From this week’s sketches, there are four that need to be digitized. Try to come up with as many variations as possible for each logo idea.
Week 5：Continue to experiment with different wordmarks and logo combinations, paying attention to spatial rationality.
Week 6：Experiment with the color palette further. Try to keep it to 1-2 colors so it's easier to match other secondary colors later. Research secondary colors and brand fonts that might be useful for your business. Reminder to submit Task 2A: Logo Research and Analysis, Task 2B: Logo Design, and Task 2B: Logo GIF in the drive
REFLECTION
Experience
In the logo design course, I went through the whole process from the initial conceptualization to the final design. Through communication with teachers and classmates, I learned how to combine creativity with customer needs and use design software such as Adobe Illustrator for specific design operations. This experience gave me a deeper understanding of the complexity and creativity of design.
Observations
During the design process, I observed that excellent logo designs are usually simple and easy to recognize. Communication with teachers and classmates is very important to accurately understand the design requirements and target audience. In addition, I also noticed that different colors and fonts can convey different emotions and information, which requires careful choices in design.
Findings
Through this course practice, I found that a successful logo must not only be beautiful, but also clear and consistent in various sizes and application scenarios. Design is an iterative process that needs to be continuously improved through repeated modifications and feedback. In addition, there are a wide range of sources of inspiration, and details in daily life can also inspire creativity.
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