Final Project - Self-Identity (Your Own Brand)

For the Final Project, I chose to do the first task, which is about Self-Identity (Your Own Brand).

Research & Ideation

After receiving the assignment, I took some time to brainstorm and thought about what I wanted to present in my Brand Style Guide. Most importantly, I wanted to present my Brand Style Guide as something that is close to my heart and represents the most authentic form of myself. My project should showcase myself as an authentic, creative and fun-loving individual. The theme should be minimalistic yet fun. I was thinking that I could use pastel colours as I really like those colours. To guide myself in creating the Brand Style Guide, I came up with a Word Cloud using these words: Authenticity, Creative, Fun, Laidback and Minimalistic. This is the Mood Board for my project and I am hoping to achieve vibes that are similar to these pictures:


Sketches

Colour Guidelines

For the colour guidelines, I wanted something pastel colour. Hence, I started off by using a colour palette generator to get a rough sense on how I could pair different colours together. As I really like blue and want to present my brand as my authentic self, I was leaning towards choosing pastel blue colours in the palette generated.

Typography System

For the typology system, I browsed through the available fonts online and on Adobe. I decided to go with Neue Haas Grotesk because it is minimalistic, looks clean and easy to read.

Logo

These are the initial sketches of my logo. I was playing around with two main designs of the logo - one being more playful and bright, while the other being more structured yet laidback.

Name Card

These are the sketches of my name card. I want my name card to be minimalistic yet memorable.

I also referenced some of the name cards I saw while visiting cafes in Singapore.

Resume

This is a rough sketch of my resume. I mainly decided on the sections that I want to show but have not confirmed on how I want to display the content.

Adobe Workspace

These are some screenshots of my Adobe Workspace using Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.

For Adobe InDesign, I used it to structured my Brand Style Guide. I made use of the various Screen Modes and Grids to make sure that my elements are aligned properly.



For Adobe Illustrator, I used it to create my brand style guides assets such as logos, name cards and resumes using tools such as Pen Tool, Anchor Point Tool and various shapes tools.



For Adobe Photoshop, I used it to create versions of my Applications Examples. I used tools such as the Warp tool in order to place my Brandings nicely on various application areas.


Critiques and Feedback

Individual Consultation Round 1

During the individual consultation, I mentioned that I was not sure of how much should I be doing or how many iterations should I be doing for the Brand Style Guide. Merlin suggested that I could do more variations of my designs, try out different colours and do numerous thumbnail sketches before filtering out to the final version that I want. He also mentioned that for logos, I could try to explore shorter and longer versions of them. Hence, from his feedback, I have decided that I will try out:

  1. For Logo, I will try out various designs and structures for them. For example, having a shorter and longer version or varying the layout of my logo.
  2. For the Name Card, I will vary the layout as well and play with colours to see what looks better.

This is what I came up with:



Group Critique

During the group critique, I showed my classmates six sketches of my logo and received mixed feedback from my classmates. I wanted to understand what style of logo appealed more to my classmates before proceeding with exploring with more sketches of my logo. In general, based on my word cloud, my classmates preferred the designs in the middle row, which happened to be the one that I wanted to go ahead with. Hence, I decided to proceed with my choice and went ahead with this logo:

However, this is not the final version of the logo. I went to make further sketches and brainstormed on how I could improve the logo by varying the layout and elements.

Feedback from Friends

I also asked for feedback for my logo from my friends on Telegram. This is the logo that I showed them.

In general, they mentioned 2 points:


  1. The colours of my name at the bottom of the logo should have black in front of light blue, instead of the other way round.
  2. Having “aerin” and “Aerin Ng” in the logo makes it repetitive

I decided to adopt the change for point 1. For point 2, I am considering to adopt this feedback, however, I decided to wait until the second individual consultation before deciding! This is because at that point in time, I was not sure of how to brand my logo and wanted to get more feedback and ask some questions to Merlin before proceeding with adopting this change! This is how my logo looks like after incorporating pointer 1:

Individual Consultation Round 2

For the second individual consultation, I presented these 2 logos to ask for feedback. The first is my Primary Logo, while the second is my Secondary Logo:



I received some pointers and feedback from Merlin:

  1. I was trying to do an Adaptive Logo and can refer to NUS’ logo guidelines. I could variate my logos by adding B&W, monotone, warm or cool versions of the logos. The amount of logos I can have is up to me. I can also vary my logo layouts.
  2. I should swap my Primary and Secondary logos.
  3. I should have logo guidelines such as how to use, how not to use the logos and spacing guidelines.
  4. Any fonts I used in my logo should be included in my typography system as well. I should also write down the purpose of the fonts.
  5. Resume should be as detailed as possible, depending on the position that I am applying for.
  6. My Brand Style Guide is like a rule book telling people what to use and what not to use.

After this consultation, I was even more sure that the feedback I received from my friends “Having “aerin” and “Aerin Ng” in the logo makes it repetitive” should be implemented. This is because if I am adopting an adaptive logo, I should have a consistent symbol or base logo that appears in all variations of logo, rather than having repetitive content which makes it not intuitive to be adapted.

Not only that, I will be adopting all pointers from Merlin:

  1. I will be adding variants of my logo such as coloured and grayscale. I will have various configurations of my logo such as vertical and horizontal configurations.
  2. Instead of presenting my logos as Primary and Secondary, I will have a base symbol called the ‘A Symbol’. Thereafter, I will present my logos and display different configurations for them.
  3. I will include colour specifications, minimum clear space and things to avoid for the logo.
  4. I will include the font used in my logo variations in my typology system.
  5. In my resume, I will include certain keywords that are relevant to the position I am applying for, which is a Designer.
  6. Other than telling people how to use my logos, showing the name card and resume, I will also include Application Examples so that it is clearer on how to use my branding.

Forum Feedback

These are some of the screenshots that I have shared in the Forum Presentation:






I have received a total of 4 feedback replies from my classmates and 1 feedback reply from Merlin:





These are a summary of their replies. These are the things that I did well for my Brand Style Guide:

  1. It is clean and simple
  2. Creative in including different logo configurations
  3. Pretty colour scheme in which the colours work well together
  4. Good minimalistic concept and logo is sleek

These are the improvement points that I received and will be implementing:

  1. Logo:
    1. Add an X to each of the image on the Logo Guidelines - Things to Avoid.
  2. Name Card:
    1. Incorporate the second vertical configuration of your logo to the back of the name card to add some variation and make use of the various configurations you created
  3. Resume:
    1. Use actual text for each section and heading as using dummy text makes it hard to tell how the actual final resume will look like
    2. Size of the titles (eg" "Work Experience") and the body text can have a slightly bigger size difference (i.e. larger headers, smaller body text) to give more visual hierarchy

These are the improvement points that I received and will NOT be implementing:

  1. Logo:
    1. Highlight specific keywords in the logo description to highlight the things that I want to focus on → I am not adopting this because I did not find this necessary in bringing out what I am trying to deliver in the Brand Style Guide. Additionally, the sentences and paragraphs in my guide are quite short, which does not make highlighting as necessary.
  2. Name Card:
    1. For the front, it is a little difficult to identify my name as the words and outlines are overlapping. I could consider expanding the main "A" symbol to encapsulate your name. → I am not adopting this because I only received this feedback from one person and did not hear of this from other people that I asked for feedback. Furthermore, it is my intention to overlap the words and outline to create a special effect to the logo. Hence, I will not be adopting this feedback.
  3. Resume:
    1. Replace your name at the top left with the horizontal configuration of your logo. Can incorporate elements of logo into my resume → I am not adopting this because I want to present a more professional image of me in my resume and will not be incorporating so many graphic elements in my resume.
    2. Incorporate the Snell Roundhand font for sub-heading "Designer.Creative" as its cursive nature corresponds to the meaning of those words → I am not adopting this because the intention of the Snell Roundhand font is only for the logo and I do not plan to use this in any text content. This is because fonts such as Neue Haas Grotesk would be more readable and can present a more professional tone in my resume, compared to Snell Roundhand which is a font meant to be cursive and looks aesthetic in the logo.

Changes Made

These are the changes that I have made.

For the logo guidelines, I added in ‘X’ for emphasise the Things to Avoid for my logo.

For my name card, I incorporated the second vertical configuration of your logo for the back of my name card to show the adaptiveness of my logo in the name card. This also helps to highlight me as a creative person as I showcase various logo variations in the name card.

For the resume, I inserted actual texts and reformatted the font sizes to further differentiate the headers and body content.

Final Brand Style Guide

After going through many iterations and feedback, I have finally concluded my Brand Style Guide. This has been a really fun process and I am very grateful that I have taken NM3217 :)

These are some extracts from my final brand style guide:




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