The branding
An essential part of this project is determining the visual identity and branding of my proposed business idea to inform the marketing document and collaterals. During my Graphic Design a Fashion Business & Entrepreneurship modules, I experimented with some concepts for what kind of aesthetics I felt drowned to. I developed a logo, which I really loved, and determined what brand colour I felt that represented myself and my brand best. Furthermore, I also had my first experience at designing myself a possible product that aligned with my branding choices and career aspirations. Although I was pleased with the results from the previous assignments, I feel that I can still develop those ideas further and polish the results to achieve something even greater. Therefore, I chose to re-design my logo and product bottle based on my previous work into something more commercially viable. Also, I intend on gathering pertinent insights from a consumer standpoints on what perception they have on the before and after on the development of visuals and branding choices.
The before
The Logo
To start with, I decided to redesign my brand logo. The name of the brand is BRIXI, which refers to my last name. I chose to use this name because although it is personal to me and my heritage, to an uniformed audience it can appear as entirely anonymous and doesn’t contain any strong connotations. I also drawn inspiration from the brand Glossier, which utilises a brand name that is closely linked to its founder without being entirely literal.
Also, I observed that in my own consumer experience brands that have short names such as Glossier, Byredo, Olaplex or Verso, are easily recognisable and memorable. On that note, the mentioned brands have another thing in common, they all utilise sans-serif fonts. In an article by Business of Fashion entitled “The Revolution Will Not Be Serifised: Why Every Luxury Brand’s Logo Looks the Same”, recommended to me by my supervisor Jessica, the author discourses on the transition from serif to sans-serif typefaces used in the logos of some of the most recognisable luxury fashion houses. He explains that this decision has been made purposefully by brands for it allows better legibility of the brand name, but ultimately, the reason being that it becomes more easily repurposed, especially online (Whelan, 2019). Sans-serif also appears to be considered as more modern, approachable and clean (Rinaldi, 2019).
Therefore, for my initial brand logo I already knew the brand name and that I wanted to experiment using sans-serif typefaces. Furthermore, I wanted to incorporate my favourite colour and use some sort of motif that represented my personal aesthetics and that could be used as an abbreviation for the logo later. My outcome was this:
The colour is inspired by my dog, Matilda, as well as the #beigeaesthetics trend seen on social media (Over 463K posts on Instagram), I liked the idea and I felt strong about the end result. However, I felt that the logo was hard to scale down as the writing was very thin and against a pale background it would easily fade away. I also liked the shapes I used but I thought they could work better as a separate element, which would allow for fun customisations and abbreviations used in different contexts. Therefore, I started it all again.
I started by doing a fonts page with all my favourite choices in black and white, against my brand colour. This allowed me to see which fonts worked well together with my colour choice as well as to compare their functionality. I ended up scrapping straight away a few of the options since after looking closely they reminded me too much of other brands. For instance, font #2 is very similar to the one used by Bobbi Brown and the last two are quite reminiscent of COSRX. So, I decided to experiment with font #1 and #3 which are the same but #3 is in bold, also I had used #1 on my original logo idea so I knew I liked it already. Fortunately, these were also chosen as the best alternatives by a focus group I conducted with five potential consumers.
After careful consideration, I chose the strongest options and to make my final decision I created a label concept to see how they would work alongside other text. Ultimately, I could not make the decision alone, thus once again, I consulted my focus group and together we decided that 'Option #1' was the best. Some of the common threads amongst the interviewed people were that the logo appeared clean and modern without being too monotonous since it did not utilised black like every other brand in the market does.
Option #1:
Option #2:
Option #3:
Later on, I developed also a logo abbreviation which will work well in social media platforms, documents and labels.
In conclusion, the decision to change the logo was the ultimately for the best. After consulting my focus group and further development of my initial ideas I have developed a stronger and more polished version of my envisioned design. I am very pleased with the result and for further considerations, I will make sure to rely on the use of reliable consumer eyes and opinions to help me inform my decisions. Moving forwards, I intend on using the logo outcome to conduct wider consumer research and brand perception feedback through the use of surveys and Instagram pools, where I can reach a wider demographics and test the commercial appeal of the brand.
References:
Whelan, J., 2019. The Revolution Will Not Be Serifised: Why Every Luxury Brand’S Logo Looks The Same. [online] The Business of Fashion. Available at: <https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/the-revolution-will-not-be-serifised-why-every-luxury-brands-logo-looks-the-same-burberry-balmain-balenciaga> [Accessed 13 August 2020].
Rinaldi, J., 2019. Sans Serif Vs Serif Font: Which Should You Use & When?. [online] Impact. Available at: <https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/sans-serif-vs-serif-font-which-should-you-use-when> [Accessed 13 August 2020].
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