OUGD402- Studio Brief 02- Self Branding- Brief

We have been given a brief to design, develop and produce self branding that effectively communicates and promotes us as individuals, designers and learners. To inform your design decisions you should reflect upon your learning aspirations and design direction. You should aim to communicate the context of your interests by referencing specific designers, studios, principles and audiences where necessary.

We need to explore, develop and demonstrate content, processes and areas of design that interest us at this point in time and may indicate our emerging creative concerns in Graphic Design.

Deliverables:

Fully resolved self branding, including but not limited to:

A logotype/symbol
Colour swatch
Typeface (display and body copy)
Presentation template (grid)

This should be developed with reference and relevance to your own creative practice.

Evidence of practical, conceptual and contextula research into materials, fornats and content.

I have been researching other designers self branding to gather inspiration and an idea of what current up coming graphic designers are doing.

I like how simple this design is, simply just their initials arranged in a clever way to create a clean aesthetic. Seeing the branding spread across this wide range of collateral highlights how far we can take this, I think the stamp is a really good idea however I am unsure when you would actually use a stamp.

I really like the debossing on this design along with the metallic lettering, I think it creates a quality to the lettering, making all the white space around it appropriate as it gives it much more of a presence. There is no obvious text or indicator what this branding is for or what they do apart from a small safety pin- implying something to do with textiles. I think having a more subtle link like this is more effective than over crowding the card with a description which could be shown with a small symbol or illustration like this.

I find the bold, bright brush strokes used in this design exciting, and therefore eye catching and memorable. This is a good trait to have in self branding as the overall aim is to promote yourself, to make others more aware of yourself and your work and to ultimately remember you/your work. They have not over done it though, the overall aesthetic of the design is still very minimal, I would like to bring in another media or texture like they have.

I think this simplistic, debased design works very well, there is something different and interesting about the fact they have used no ink. However I feel that this style of design would not work well for me. My self branding needs to reflect my work and me also, and I try and make my work more exciting and fun, therefore I need to find a way in which my self branding shows this.

The only thing that is significantly different about this card is the spacing of the letters, I find it interesting by altering only one thing but on quite an extreme level can be enough to make the design stand out and be different yet effective. Another thing I have noticed while researching peoples self branding is that the most successful ones have had a very restricted colour pallet, down to mostly just 2 colours, and one of them being the stock. I think this makes the design more memorable and aesthetically pleasing as it doesn't look too busy or chaotic.

(Above) This is one of my favourites. There is something quite childlike about it, I think it is the little symbols in the middle as well as the curved lettering placement and the bold colour. I think it has a playful image and makes me want to have one, which proves it is a successful business card. It also looks like there is a subtle debossing on the card which brings in a different aspect and texture to the card physically.

This one is for a brand with a name, not a designers name, but I think this is really successful. They have linked the name in to the appearance of the type, showing spilt milk through the length and positioning of the 'i' and 'l'. This makes the card more interactive for the holder as they will make this link them selves. I think this is a very successful way of branding.

This same kind of idea has been done for this business card too (below). 

On behance you can see a wide range of peoples self grading projects and their development process. It is spread across different collateral and also shown how it would look in different places, e.g; a poster in a building. This enables you to see what your design would look like in the real world instead of just on your computer screen so I think this is a good idea. 

I really like the overall design of this too, it is very simplistic and has a geometric feel to it,  but they have also used just one bright colour to make the design stand out.