Creating a brand is a challenge, but I love creating identities and developing them as they grow like the people they represent. An aspect of design I'd like to specialize and work more in is Brand Identity Design. Creating a face for a small business or professional is a process, and I thought I'd show you how my creative process works when it comes to developing a brand. I've learned and discovered that this is so much more than making a logo for someone. I developed my personal brand, and which better way to showcase my process than with my own Brand Identity:
Stage 1: Who am I Branding?/The Brainstorm
I know this may come as an easy question, but it's really one that you have to think about a lot deeper than you realize.
In design school, my professor was big on doing research and making lists. This way, you explore and record every possibility for narrowing down later. Branding ourselves was actually an assignment for my Portfolio and Professional practice class, and one of our first things we did was come up with a list of adjectives about ourselves through Semiotics (the study of making meanings):
Semantic: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer
What does it mean? How does it make you feel?
Examples: Creative, artistic, goofy, silly, weird, whimsical, intuitive, imaginative
Synctactic: Relations among signs in formal structures
What is it made of?
Examples: Ideas, color, substance, art, talent
Synctactic: Relations between signs and sign-using agents
What does it look like?
Examples? Curly, human, artsy, wannabe Old-Hollywood
As an artist, I am also an extremely visual person and need to visually brainstorm beyond list-making. I can often use the words on the lists I make to find imagery. I sketch a lot, but I am actually a huge advocate for Pinterest (I have
69 boards!)
and will make pinboards for a particular brand or project I am working on. I use it for inspiration mainly, not to copy. I can put my visual thoughts in one place that I can refer to while in the design development stage.
My boards may looked cluttered, but I pin anything that visually interests me. I like to find inspirations for ideas I have not even considered.
Stage Two: Sketching
Like the research and brainstorming stage, this step in the process is also quite lengthy. Before I started sketching, I had a few old logos to reference:
A couple of those are a little hard to look at! (Yeesh! What was I thinking!?) But, we all start somewhere. My former business
(Emily Bee Arts) was very cutesy and trendy (feathers were everywhere at the time) and I felt quite boxed-in as a boutique wedding photography business. I needed to brand myself as an artist, and not a specific business where my creative professional career, myself, and my brand has room to grow and develop.
I can't tell you how many initial sketches I had for my brand for this class.
I'm really enamored by Old Hollywood and REALLY wanted to tie that into my branding somehow. I played with fonts that looked vintage, but most of them looked like they belonged on Bewitched and it didn't quite make sense for me. I then thought about one of my favorite designers, Saul Bass, and the title sequences he created for Alfred Hitchcock's films and many other's. He used a technique of cutting shapes and letters from cut paper and then animating it. I did the same. I cut letters out of construction paper and assembled them. I used this technique for another attempted business venture as well (I don't have any record of the cut-paper for my current logo sorry!):
Long story short, the letter arrangements are scanned and photographed, brought into photoshop and illustrator...eventually I came up with this:
Color is an important part of branding, and initially I used orange and teal. Teal is one of my favorite colors, and the shade of orange that I had chosen was complimentary to it. Sometimes coming up with colors for a brand is just that simple. Anyways, the brand had to be applied to a few things such as my resume and business cards.
I was content with this mark for quite a while. I made a bunch of resumes and business cards with it, and I still like them A LOT. I finished the design program last May, and really began jumping back into job hunting and my freelance work this past fall. I started other projects and after several months I realized....my last name
Bartos has the word
ART in it (MIND BLOWN!)....I had to do something about that, and from that little epiphany came my current mark:
I used the same mark and highlighted the word ART in the logo. I changed my color scheme to CMYK (it's a graphic design reference to the inks used in print graphics) and made a couple other logos in the same style for my Monster Shop on Etsy as well as the Boudoir Photography aspect of my business. I used to work for a coffee shop chain that has multiple logos that it utilizes quite well on many of its well-branded retail and marketing. I was going for the same thing. Three simple logos, same style, but all part of one main brand.
Stage 3: Applying the Brand
I can't stress this enough, but creating a logo is never enough. As a designer, I offer services to create JUST a mark and let the owner of the brand apply it themselves. However, in a perfect world I would help every single client with a larger identity. A logo is merely the symbol for the brand, and the identity has many other facets...just like people and their personalities!
Applying the brand depends on each individual business and the products they sell. You have to come up with a list of business aspects that you need branded. Here's the list I came up with:
- Packaging: Photography, Drawings, Prints, Emily's Monster Shop, Gift Bags.
- Business Cards
- Promotional Marketing (Very vague, but still necessary)
- Resume
- Website
- Social Media Pages: Facebook, Twitter
- Stationary
When you make this initial list, keep in mind that you may figure out you need more branding done as you go. You may come up with other things you hadn't thought of, or you may need more done as your business inevitably changes and grows (I wonder how many more times I will mention that this will happen).
I personally had to keep budget in mind with all this. Luckily, I had a lot of Kraft colored packaging left over from
Emily Bee Arts that I figured I could just apply the new logo to. The first thing I got was a logo stamp. I can stamp packaging and stationary with my logo instead of paying to have envelopes, letterheads, and cards personalized.
The next item I had branded were logo stickers. I figured I could use these for packaging both stuck on the wrapping as well as inside as a little gimme with the products. I also keep these on my person to hand out. They work well as both a packaging material and a promotional giveaway. People love stickers (I love stickers).
The next step was creating business cards for myself. I was faced with the challenge of covering many facets of my brand while still displaying an understanding that all of these different faces of the identity are under one main umbrella brand. Thanks to
moo.com, these fun cards are what happened. I kept the CMYK color palette, and attempted to show different branches of photography (keeping the images black and white so the bright colors would pop) as well as my design abilities. I kept the voice fun and bright, as I try to with all of my work.
Naturally, I had to begin applying branding to products. Pictured below is a flash drive that boudoir clients can purchase complete with the logo and color scheme. I deliver these in hot magenta silk organza bags filled with sequins and fake gemstones to come full circle with the unicorn vibe.
I market my brand a lot by relying on social media platforms. Therefore, my presence on social media is of utmost importance and it is necessary that I keep the brand aesthetic strong and consistent through these avenues. Here is my current facebook page's cover photo and avatar. I use my photography as a selling point and forefront for my creative services. I kept with the monochromatic theme, and kept the accent colors CMYK.
Every individual and business are their own, so they function differently. However, the main idea of any brand is to develop an identity and then apply it to all aspects of the business. Brands also change with the ebb and flow of the business it represents and it has to grow with that.
xx emily
