Letterhead Design

With the unusual way I have designed my envelopes and letter shape, I thought it would be an important stage to design the layout of the content itself. Therefore I studied some grid layouts (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/understanding-grids/) and started to mockup a few of my own. I knew that using the same colour across all the promotional material I produced was important, so I decided again, to use purple, I knew from the traditional letter, and the legal requirements of any business that sends a letter that it was important to include contact details on the letter, so I decided to use the way I had folder the paper to change the layout. I created a blank space on the left to begin with so that the main content was on the right, this is like a letter I found during my research and you can see this here:

You can see my first design is similar but removes the box from the left, it is below. I found by having the content of the letter so far across the page just seemed unbalanced so I scrapped it.

To create a design much more like the one I was inspired by I moved the informational section to the left but maintained the width of the column since from my previously research I knew it was important that the line width wasn’t too long as it would be easier to read. Also, I disliked the text being so close to the left  as I feel it didn’t work with what I’ve learnt from my research about white space and overall layout so I moved it over a bit to the right, you can see this edition below.

Then I started to consider the experience of opening the letter and taking the letter out of the envelope, I folded the paper into thirds, the way I was planning on doing, and realised the section I created on the front of the letter wasn’t quite a third so I changed that to be exactly one third. Next placed the letter in the envelope and pulled it out as if I was opening it fore the first time, I visualised my logo on the centre and coloured sections on the thirds above and below. My logo is purple and I wanted to have a consistency across my branding therefore I decided to have the coloured sections in purple too, this mean’t I had to move the logo on the letter because it didn’t stand out against the new background colour.

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Promotion Pack – Loyalty Card

I thought something that would be really useful to include would be a Loyalty card for the client, this way it almost guarantees they will keep the card if they have already thrown away the business card. A constant reminder of my business every time they look in their wallets. Although I’m giving the client a 25% discount off my services, firstly it makes them believe they’re getting a cheaper deal, and secondly I would account for that when pricing up my services. I have tried to stay in line with other luxury style cards you can see my inspirations and mockup below.

MY DESIGN;

I was reasonably happy with my initial mockup so I made no changes at all, below you can see the initial print and then the final print, as you can see this final version looks like a much higher quality.

References;

http://www.barcodesinc.com/cats/plastic-id-cards/loyalty.htm

Promotion Pack – Packaging & Leaflet

My first mockup I created was based with design cues from this image:

A letter for a San Diego hotel, something that I thought worked really well because it looks very luxurious and has a very good quality appearance. This is what I want to represent in my self-promotion pack so I set about designing the packaging myself, you can see it here:

Inside I created a little booklet to tell the client what I do (above), the front page shows the logo while the second page contains the contents of the rest of the package, a third page shows an image of me with a quote of a famous designer and the fourth page is a little cheesy with line from the song “Call me maybe” by Carly Rae Jepson. As you can see it says “Here’s my number; (number) so call me maybe”. This was my initial design but after further research which has already been posted I realised a lot of this was irrelevant. The design is going to be of a front of an iPhone so it will be reshaped, secondly the logo will become a smaller visual on the front page as the main concept will like google search in a web browser. The second page will now instead show all the skills that I am capable of. The third page has completely changed as I realised that by quoting someone else in my book it makes me seem less important which is not the effect I want to have so I have created my own sales line to further advertise myself and this will be placed over an image of a laptop. The final page will have contact details but if I want portray myself as a quality service, I shouldn’t have any cheesy lyrics so I have decided to drop those and add in alternative methods to contact me like my twitter and blog address. The second design is in the stage from paper to digital and also has the correct content:

The final mockup when reshaped and redesigned to be like an iPhone looks like this;

Outside;

Inside;

The only issue with the final version is that the phone is on the backside, this is a printing mistake and will be fixed by the final edition.

The next step was to create the final mockup of the insert and also create the mapped version of them so they were ready for print. When on my visit to Wyke Printers, I showed them my designs and then discussed with them any changed they though would need to be made to my designs. On the actual folds because I have used multiple pieces of paper and glues them together to get the design I wanted, I have folds and joins where I don’t need them, by creating a map I can then print it out on one piece of paper then cut out shape and then fold and glue in the relevant places, this would not only make it much easier for mass production but would also create a much better experience for the client. Below are the maps of my designs and also the final mockups of my booklet.

I decided that I wanted to make the iPhone look a a little more professional, so I removed all of the real images of the iPhone and added my own details in for the microphone and then made the back look like an actual iPhone too. You can see the new version below alongside a real image of the iPhone for comparison.

Here you will see the complete set of different versions that I created starting with my initial design to completely finished version. You will notice that the first iPhone, second iteration was actually printed backwards, so doesn’t look right, this was fixed for the final version.

Revisiting Logo – Typeface

I decided, having redesigned my logo with previous research of the fibonacci sequence to redesign my logo with previous research of fonts, to make sure I have the perfectly executed logo. I currently had Helvetica Neue as the font for the logo because from my research it was versatile and seemed to look appropriate in all my mockups. I looked at my research at the luxury branding post found here (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/researching-luxury-brands/) and noticed that there was a clever mixture of serif and san-serif fonts, I believe this is something that is common across a lot of brands and thought this is something that I should implement in my logo design. Again I want tho give my brand luxurious quality service type of feel, therefore I deuced to find a serif font for the word “AKB” and a sans-serif for the word “design.

I scoured the web for appropriate fonts for my logo, I found two typefaces that fit my logo design perfectly so I tested them to make sure they worked and then went through the process of spacing out the letters of design to match the bars and then also space them out again using the Fibonacci Sequence spiral (FSS), you can see the steps below;

First I made sure the letters of the word “design” were central to the six bars of the chart, I changed the colour of the lettering so I could see the letters better.

Next I used the FSS to make sure the chart was sized correctly, I then changed the line height of the lettering to make sure thy fit within the FSS parameters.

Next, I did the same with the word “design”, again changing the colour so I could see better.

Once the words were sized correctly, I made sure that they were spaced out equally again using the same FSS

The only job left was then to fix the colours of the words to match the logo and you can see the old and the new here:

OLD:

NEW:

Revisiting Logo

Revisiting Logo

I wanted to make some final adjustments to the shape and design of my logo based upon some theory and design principles that I researched.

The main adjustment that I felt was required was to get the logo to work within the parameters of the Fibonacci Sequence, something I had earlier found in my research that was used you in a lot of iconic designs of today, and something that appears across nature from something as small as dragonfly wings to the incredibly colossal like the universe. I started by opening my logo design in Illustrator and importing the image of the Fibonacci Sequence spiral which is this:

The first step I took was to create the curvature of the graph so I rotated the FSS (Fibonacci sequence spiral) and lined up the corners then removed the irrelevant sections. You can see that here:

Next step I created two replicas of the graph and then resized them so that they were in line with the two lower lines, I have circled the points in which they cross below:

With the logo redesigned to fit the FSS, the next step would be to size and scale the elements of the logo including text to give it a proper hierarchy. I rotated the FSS and made the graph fit within the square at the top, next was ‘AKB’ so I resized the text and adjusted the letter spacing so it fit within the height and width of its box which you can see below:

The next step was to do the exact same with the design but this time I chose one of the small squares to give ‘AKB’ more importance within the hierarchy.

The very final step was to arrange the elements so they were in order and had the correct hierarchy. Once again this was easy as all I had to do was rotate the FSS and used the two smallest squares that meant the elements were equally spaced out to give the correct amount of space and improve hierarchy, you can see this below:

One point I haven’t discussed so far is some of the colour theory within the logo, obviously I have previously written about why I have chosen this colour set, but I haven’t discussed the colour arrangement within the logo. The basis of the logo is meant to somewhat represent a graph of my performance as a student at Hull College over the entire 3 years. There are six bars because there are 6 semesters for the entire web design course I am studying, therefore the logo represents the quality of my work whilst at college. The two lower sections I have added in have been applied with a lighter shade of purple, this is to represent the competition I will face as a web designer and that is why the two front sections are lower down because it would give the indication that my work is of a much better standard and quality. Again the front sections are lighter for a couple of reasons; firstly it adds contrast to the logo and secondly in the sense that it is meant to represent the competition, the front two sections are a lighter purple whereas the back section (which would in turn represent my work) is in a black to dark purple gradient which would indicate power, authority and elegance over the other competitors within the market. Below you can see the old (on the left) and new version of the logo (on the right).

Creative Futures ~ Brief

My brief is to create a logo, this logo is going to represent me as a student, the work that I produce, something I will be able to use to brand my work as my own and become instantly recognisable to the people who view it. With little knowledge of branding, I plan to study and revise key concepts that will affect my final design.

Initial thoughts on my logo are that I want it to be based upon the name “BRODIE” so it is instantly recognisable as my own, it should be somewhat relatable to a computer or the web as i am a web designer. I have written these initial thoughts before I start my research so that you can see how my ideas develop after I have researched further into the world of branding.