Beyond the Logo: Crafting a Brand Identity

2. Brand Identity Introduction: Hi everyone, welcome to Beyond the Logo: Crafting a Brand Identity. I'm Courtney Eliseo, and in this class I'm going to be taking you through my personal process for developing a brand identity so that you can take those tools and use them on their own when you're working with your own clients, or if you're designing a brand identity for yourself and your own business. Throughout the class, I'm going to be using a mixture of slides and some screen casting so that you can see with an Illustrator a little bit of how I pull some of the elements together myself. So we're going to start out with an introduction and let's just get right into it. Before we get into too many of the details, I should say that this is really just one way of doing things. It's a process that I've developed over the years, and it's really worked for me, working with small businesses, but every studio and designer, I'm sure has a different way of doing things, so feel free to substitute parts of the process or to put your own spin on things. This isn't the end all, be all of brand identity process. So just to give you a little bit of background about myself, I run a design studio with my husband who is a web developer, His name's Bryan and the studio's called Seamless Creative. We specialize on creating brand identities for small businesses. I also run a design blog called Design Work Life, which features design inspiration, and both businesses have been around since 2008. So this is just a small sampling of some of the logos that we've created over the years, which are part of larger brand identity projects. Throughout the presentations, I've sprinkled some of this work through each unit so that you can see in some cases how a logo has developed into a larger brand identity system, and I'll point that out when we get there. With all that out of the way, let's get right into it. So the first thing I want to start out with is talking about brand versus brand identity. I think that in the design world, the terms brand and branding get tossed around a little bit where they don't exactly belong, so I think it's important to cover the definitions of what those two things are, and determine what their differences are. As far as brand goes, there is definition that I personally like by Seth Godin, and that definition is, "A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that taken together account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another." So a brand isn't a tangible thing that you can't really touch or see. It goes beyond design, and within that brand though, you'll find the brand identity, which is the visual representation of all those entailed intangible thoughts, feelings, and relationships that the consumer has with a product or an organization or a business. I really feel like this distinction is an important one to make, which is why I'm always really specific when I talk about the work that I do in saying that it's brand identity and not branding, because branding is a huge topic and I really specialize in the visual identity part of that. That's what you're going to be doing as well in this class, so it doesn't encompass the much broader practice of branding, which involves all sorts of different disciplines and many other people that need to be involved in creating a holistic brand. So in terms of a brand identity, in my practice, there are a few main things that make up the components of what that is. At its core is the logo for the company or organization, and this can be a singular logo or a system of coordinating logos, but either way, it's always the primary identifier for that business. Where brand identity comes in, is that a logo is never seen or experienced in isolation. You're always seeing it in some sort of context, and in some sort of environment, whether that's a website or on a business card or on a billboard or anything like that. All of the elements that you're putting together with the logo really need to be carefully considered because the way that they come together plays a really huge role in how your client presents itself to the world. So in my process, there are three main components that come together to support the logo in a brand identity project, and those are color, typography, and graphic language. In the next few units, we're going to go into a lot more detail about each of those things. So moving on for your project throughout this class, you're going to be creating your own brand entity as we go along, and as I mentioned in the description, you can use a logo that you already have, whether it's for yourself or approved by a client, or if you don't have one and just want to do the exercise, I did make up one logo for you to use. So this is the logo, and some of you might recognize this if you're into pop culture. This is of a company from one of my favorite TV shows that is now off the air called Party Down. They technically had a logo if you count the titles for the television show, but I sort it a bit. So this is just the black and white version of it so that you have kind of a clean slate to work with, and I'm providing some other elements which I'll talk about in the next couple of videos as well. Also, as we go through this class, I'm going to be showing you how I develop a brand identity with one of the logos that I've worked with in the past. So for my project, I'm going to be showing you the identity for Maggie Harcourt photography, who is a wedding photographer, and each step of the way I'm going to show you how her identity developed, so that you can see how I'm putting something together right alongside you putting it together for yourself. Now before we go any further, I should say that this also assumes that you have two really important pieces of the puzzle in place, and that is, a creative brief, and a mood board. For my process, these are essential, and there are two documents that we're going to be referring back to constantly throughout the process, so it's something you really need to have, and just in case these are the things that you're not familiar with and you haven't done before, I have two videos following this one that give you an overview about both of them so that you can establish them on your own. This is usually something that I put together before I even start on a logo. But for the purpose of this class, it's okay if you have to just take a step back and develop these based on the logo that you already have. So that is it for the introduction, and next up we're going to talk creative briefs. 3. Creative Brief Overview: Hi everyone. Welcome to Unit 1, video 2, where we're going to talk about creative briefs. Writing briefs is actually a practice that I learned in college, and has really stuck with me over the years in running my own business. It's something that I use on every single project I do. I definitely feel that projects are much more successful, and run more smoothly when they start out with one. I also have to mention that I did ask some of you to send me your questions before we start the class, to see if I can incorporate some of the answers to them in the curriculum. A lot of the questions you had can really be answered by using a really good creative brief on a project. Let's just get into it, and I'll give you some more information as we go along. What is a creative brief? It is really just a document that outlines the project parameters in a clear and concise way. I always say to my clients that it acts as a blueprint or a guide for the direction that the creative work should take. It really ensures that both you and a client are on the same page, before you spend any time developing the work itself. The way that I usually gather information before I put a brief together, is simply through conversations with the client, whether that's over the phone or over e-mail. I also usually put together a questionnaire that I customize for each client before we start the project, to get all basic information, and to get the client really thinking about the project on their own, before working with me. Once I have all that information, that gives me a really good foundation for the content in the brief, and gives me enough content usually for me to put that together on my own. Sometimes a client will provide a brief to me that I use without having to change at all. But that's pretty rare. I would say most of the time, I'm initiating the process, and controlling the actual writing of the brief. This is an example of one of my creative briefs. It's for the project that I'm going to be showing you throughout the class. What I'm going to do in this video, is just go through each part of the brief, and explain to you what type of information should go there. Then at the end, I've also included a brief for you to download, that is for the sample project that I've given you, for our Party Down catering. You can use that if you're using the Party Down logo as your project, or you can just use it as a reference if you need to revamp the brief that you are working on for your own project. Let's just go through each one, one by one. The first section is background. The question you want to answer here is, who is the client and what is their current situation? Just a really brief description of who the client is and what their problem is right now. For example, Maggie's is, Maggie Harkov is a self-taught New York City-based wedding photographer. Her current brand identity does not reflect her unique perspective or personality. So very simple, you do not need to be an amazing writer to write a good creative brief, you just need to be clear, concise, and simple, and not make it too complicated. The second section is the objective. The question here is, what are you trying to accomplish? The answer to this should not be something straightforward like to design a logo. The objective should really be an answer to the problem that the client is trying to solve through the project, or what they're trying to achieve through doing this work. For example, Maggie's is, to reposition the Maggie Harkov photography brand, so that it more accurately reflects Maggie's unique personality and approach. She actually already had a logo in place before we started doing the project, but she didn't feel like it really reflected who she is. She wanted to make that visual part of her business more inline with who she was as a person and a photographer, so that she started attracting more of the right type of clients for her. The third section is the target audience. The question here is, who are your client's ideal customers? This doesn't necessarily need to list out their customers now, if they're looking to target a new audience, it can be their ideal customer. It just needs to focus on who this particular project is focused towards. The goal here is to really be as specific as possible, because that's only going to help you narrow down and refine the work better as you move along in the process. For example, Maggie's audience is educated, professional men and women, aged 25-35, who appreciate an attention to detail, and are seeking a very personal photography experience. If you cut it off at that first line, educated professional men and women, aged 25-35, that is a narrowed down audience, but it's still pretty broad. Once you add people who want a very personal photography experience, that narrows it down even further, which is even better. You really just want to get as specific as possible, cover everything from age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, cultural beliefs, anything that you think is relevant to your customer. Number 4 is the message. This covers what is your client trying to say? This message should just be really clear and concise. If you can boil it down to one sentence, that's ideal. Maggie's, of course, is a little bit longer than that because she did have more than one thing that she wanted to say. So hers is, with a genuine appreciation for true love, Maggie Harkov will provide you with more than a typical photography experience. She'll be a calming presence, and bring the comfort of a friend to your wedding day. What I want to mention here is that the message should be written in a way that it is talking directly to the audience who the client is targeting. Section 5 is competition. This just covers who are your clients biggest competitors? This is essentially just a list of who the client competes with, who they see as their competitors in the marketplace. For Maggie, she didn't really have anyone specific that she felt was doing the same exact thing, but she, of course, is always going to be competing with other photographers in her area. This can be as specific or general as you want. Your client may have a few businesses that they feel are always on the same level as them that they want to list here. You can also include their websites if you want a specific reference to them. But as long as there's a general list of who those people are, that's what you're trying to achieve with that section. Number 6 is distinguishing characteristics. This section should just cover what makes your client unique. In the previous section, you listed their competition, in this section, you want to think about how they stand out from that competition. I just do this as a simple bulleted list, with very brief sentences that highlight those differences. For example, Maggie shall bring the touch of a friend to your wedding day. She wants to make a personal connection with you. She loves love. These are all things that both of us felt were somewhat different from the wedding photographers that we're seeing out there. Those aren't necessarily things that other photographers use to identify themselves. You just really want to look for what is the most unique elements of that client's personality and their business practices, because that's what you want to make sure you're highlighting when you do the work. Number 7 is creative considerations. The question here is, does the client have any specific directives that should apply to their work? I would say more often than not, most clients I've worked with have something for this section. Usually, these are really specific visual directions. For example, if a client wants to use a specific color, or they want to avoid a specific color, or if there is a specific application you need to keep in mind. For example, if a logo in the end needs to be printed on leather, then that's something you need to keep in mind when you're designing, so that the details of that logo can be easily and successfully reproduced in that material. That's basically what this section is like. You can see as an example of Maggie's, she wanted me to avoid black and white. She liked greens, grays, and teals. She wanted me to try the logo with the photography label and without it, and also try some options where the logo was within a container. Now, I like to call this creative considerations, because I like to keep this section more open-ended, just because I want to have the option if. When I'm working on the project, and assessing the brief, I want to be able to come back to the client if they say, "I want you to use hot pink.", but then I'm doing the work and assessing everything, and don't feel like hot pink is the right way to go, I want to have this be a little bit more open-ended, so that I can come back to them and say, "I tried this, but I don't really think it works for whatever reason." Then number 8 is tone or key words. The question you're asking here is, what personality does the client want to project to their audience? I usually come up with a list of 3-5 adjectives that describe the client. When a client is brainstorming on the personality, I tend to tell them to think of their business as a person, and how would they describe their personality, if this was a person that they knew in real life. It's always all adjectives. I also try to make the words as specific and descriptive as possible, and to avoid generic words. For example, I avoid words like professional, because professional is a pretty generic word, and it should probably apply to every project you're doing, not just this particular one. Whereas if you think about romantic and sophisticated, those have a little bit more of a specific visual that would be associated with them. The combination of these five words definitely has a specific visual to them. I definitely try to keep it to five or less because once you're getting into more words than that, the words are just too all over the place for you to actually come up with any solution that will satisfy all of them. In the end, what I do is, I put all of this together in a document. As I said, I like to keep it to one page. I usually share it with the clients, and then we go back and forth a little bit if they see anything that they want to be changed, or doesn't feel right to their project. For example, if I put friendly as a key word and they just don't feel like that's entirely representative of who they are as a business, then we'll work on that to change it. Usually if I do enough research at the beginning and make enough good notes when I'm talking to the client on their conversations, and put together a detailed enough questionnaire, I usually have enough information that I can really distill this down on the first try. Just to bring it back to the beginning, I just want to mention, again, that for the questions that those of you asked, a creative brief is really a way to resolve a lot of the issues that you're having as you move forward. Whether you're working on a rebrand, or whether you're doing a project for yourself, a creative brief is a really helpful tool to use throughout the process. Especially when working for yourself, because I know it's really hard to design for yourself. I've struggled with that too. A creative brief is such a lifesaver because it forces you to separate yourself a little bit from the business, and look at the project as if you were designing it for a client. That way, when you're designing your own personal logo and developing the color palette for yourself, you have an actual document to refer back to, to bring it into focus, so you can say, "Okay, am I on track? Does the color fit into these key words?", etc. I think it's a really good tool. I encourage you to start using them if you're not using them now, on all of your projects moving forward. Next up, we're going to talk about mood boards, which is another really important component to the project. I'll see you there. 4. Mood Board Overview: Hi everyone. Welcome to Unit 1, video 3. In the last lesson, I gave you an overview of the creative brief. Now we're talking mood boards, which is actually the second step in my process, on any project really, but especially with brand identity projects. So what is a mood board? If a creative brief is a written blueprint for a project, then a mood board is a visual one. Essentially, it's a collage of imagery that comes together to evoke the mood that the brand identity should encompass. This step is an important one, because it enables you and a client to get on the same page visually, which can also really save time throughout the process and just make everything run more smoothly. Not everyone's definition of bold or techie is the same when that's translated into a visual format. Getting this down on paper really allows you to have a discussion of what those words mean when they're translated into imagery. Here's an example of a mood board I did. This is my way of putting them together, but you can do whatever you want. It's really fun. I like to experiment. But for the most part, I like to create asymmetrical collages where the images are all separate and come together in different ways in different shapes and sizes. This is another example of mood boards I wanted to show you. These are done by Breanna Rose, who has a really great blog. If you're not following her you should. She does a lot of mood boards and post them on her site. She just keeps them a little bit more compact than I do, which is just another way of doing it, and I think that this is totally fine also. Like I said, you can really be creative with that. This is one of the most fun parts of the process for me. The first step in creating a mood board is to choose the method. The way that you make and present a mood board is really subjective. It's just how you want to work. I have a particular way I go about doing it. I'll go through that and just show you quickly, but just keep an open mind and feel free to experiment. There's lots of apps out there that are built specifically for image gathering, there's tons of them now. There's three that I'm going to talk about a little bit because I have personal experience with them, but I know there are a million others, so this is by no means an exhaustive list. First is Pinterest. I use Pinterest constantly. I'm a really avid Pinterest user, but I don't use it for client work. This is a way to collect images on a board for a mood board. A lot of people use Pinterest as the end-all be-all for their mood boards. So they'll create a mood board with their pins and then share that with a client and go back and forth that way. You can make private boards on Pinterest now, which makes it I think a little bit more feasible for client work. There really aren't any downsides for this purpose, I just prefer to use Pinterest for painting and saving inspiration and use another app for my actual client work so that they're in separate spaces. The second app that I really love is Dropmark. I use this a lot for image gathering for mood boards. It's really essentially the same setup as Pinterest, where there's a bookmark that you use and you can collect images that way into a specific folder. You can just see them like this as a collage of images and rose, or you can click through them one by one, which is actually something I don't think Pinterest does. If I clicked on this first pinned image in the upper right, I can then scroll through them one by one, which is a nice little feature. The third app I wanted to mention is called Icebergs. It's a newer app. I featured it on design work life a little while back. But it does still require an invite request to get into it. I'm not sure how often or easily they're giving those out, but it's definitely worth a shock. That's a really great app. I would at least get on the mailing list for when they have a broader release. It works very similar to the other two apps I've already shown you. But one of the things I like about it is that it gives you the ability to actually create notes right within each folder. So I like to do a lot of writing when I'm brainstorming for things. That really helps me. You can also upload all sorts of different file types, which is different from Pinterest and other apps like that where it's really just image-based. Like I said, this is really just the tip with the apps that are available to you. You can also just stop right here. You could stop right here and have a full mood board digitally that you can share with a client and discuss that way. I personally like to take it one step farther. I like to, once I have everything gathered in a folder, download all of the images to my computer and actually go into Illustrator and create a flat mood board out of some of the images and collage them together. That's just a process I like working with better, and this is the visual results that I like better. I like having the images more alongside each other without the separation of the screen details from the app, I like to see how they interact with different shapes and sizes. But like I said, that's really up to you. Once you've chosen your method for creating the mood board, it's time to just get started and start researching visual imagery to include in the board. At this point, you should have a rough idea of where the visual path of the mood board should go, because you have the creative brief in your head that you've just developed. Keeping that in mind, it's time to just do as much research as possible and gather up as many images as you see fit for the board. I tend to gather a ton of stuff and then refine it later. If you're unsure where to start, Google Images is a really good place. I tend to start with things like the keywords from the brief. If tropical as a keyword for example, start with the Google Image search for tropical and see what comes up. You might find some images that are good for the board and might spark an idea for something else to search. I actually doing this image search the other day, noticed that they now have a pattern category sometimes at the top, which I think is awesome. As someone who uses patterns a lot, that offers a ton of possibilities for graphics on the mood board. I also search in Pinterest a ton, because there're so much imagery there, and I also actually use design inspiration, they're another good site for searching for specifically design-related information and visuals. Pinterest has so many different topics to cover so that it's great because it'll give you results that cover a lot of different things. So it'll give you a lot to pull from. The purpose here is just to really go through and research as much as you possibly can and gather up as much as you possibly can, so that you have a large number of images to work with for the mood board. Then once you have a huge number of images to work with, the next step is just to refine it, to call it down to what image do you think represents the brief in the best way possible and the visual direction that the brand should go in. Just quickly, I'm going to show you, I did make a mood board also for the party down project if you're working with that. That is going to be available for download at the end of this unit. This is what it looks like based on the brief that I gave you. You can take both of those things and compare them and see how they fit together. The other thing is this is all really open to interpretation. Someone else could have taken my brief and come up with an entirely different mood board than I did. That's what I like about this process, it's really fun and you can really be creative. Then just to show you my mood board, this is the mood board for Maggie's project that I will be working from throughout the process. I think it's nice for you to have these two things for you to have in mind as I'm showing you the work that I do and how I came up with those solutions. Things you want to consider as you're refining and boiling everything down is color and tone. I don't think the color needs to be exactly where you're going with the brand, but I think it should be somewhat similar. For example, if you have a brand that's described as feminine, maybe you want to have more feminine colors on the board, you don't want it to be a super masculine looking bored. Another thing to do is to look outside the industry. I think sometimes clients have a hard time with boards if they're seeing logos and other pieces of design from someone who's in their same industry. It's very easy to get distracted by that specific image. I'd like to try to pull things that are just outside of what that company is actually doing to a certain degree. Number 3 is keep it loose. What that means is that you should just keep in mind and make sure the client understands that nothing that's on the board is meant to be taken literally. For example, the party down board where there was a photograph of palm trees, that does not mean that the identity is automatically going to include palm trees or a photograph of palm trees. I think that it's just important to reinforce that this is just a loose visual interpretation of the path that the brand identity should take. Then just ask yourself at the end, is it line up? Can you look at the mood board in the brief next to each other and do they fit together? Do all of the keywords that you included on the brief match up with the board? If not, you definitely need to change something, whether that's actually changing a word on the brief and going back and refining that part of the project, or removing some images that you have from the board and replacing them with other ones that make more sense. That's it for mood boards, and you finish this unit. Please let me know if you have any questions in the classroom. be sure to download the files I provided, and then in the next unit we're going to talk about color. 5. Color Overview: Hi everyone. Welcome to Unit 2 where we're going to talk about color. Before I get into the details, I just want to mention that since this is an intermediate class, I'm not going to get too color theory or color basics. This is going to be more about how to develop your color palette based on the fact that you already to have that knowledge. But if this is something that you want to learn more about or you don't feel like you're strong in, I am going to provide a list of some really good resources at the end of the unit that you can download and explore more on your own as you're putting your project together. The choice of colors in an identity system is really very subjective. Color theory should definitely come into play. You should have that knowledge in mind but there are a lot of other things that are going to factor in in a more obvious way as far as the brief that you developed and the mood board you developed, all of those things have already established some sort color guideline already. Before you begin, a few things to keep in mind, the media that will be used, how many colors you really need, and what are the client preferences. Consider the media that will be used. Obviously, here is an overview of the basic color format that you're going to be using in a brand identity. The Pantone Matching System for printing, CMYK for printing, RGB for screen work, and HEX values for screen work. This is a situation where you don't need to consider everything in terms of very specific color breakdowns at this stage since you're essentially going to be picking colors from onscreen, but it is something that you want to keep in mind. For example, if you know that your client only has a budget for digital printing, you're not going to be able to replicate a Pantone color that's a metallic or a neon in digital printing. That's something that you want to keep in mind. If the client is only going to have a website and they're never going to have any print materials, then that's another thing to keep in mind. Metallics also can't really be very well reproduced on the web so that might be something that you want to avoid in terms of flat colors for the brand. Now just a quick mention of RGB versus HEX values. As far as I understand from the way that I've used them, they are pretty interchangeable. HEX values most people tend to think are more commonly used because they're actually just more practical. They're series of numbers and letters all in one row as opposed to RGB which has three separate entries for the color values. It's just easier to copy and paste from one program to another if you're using HEX. Second thing to keep in mind is, how many colors do you need? I think a good way to go is to just start with three or less. If you know that your client really wants a black and white look then that's totally fine. There's no need to add a third color in. But rather than going crazy and having a seven color palette, I think starting smaller is better and just easier to work with. As you start practicing and creating brand identities more, you'll get more comfortable with how colors are going to be used and how many you really need for each specific project. But I tend to start with three and I always tend to use a primary color, a secondary color, and a neutral color. There most often needs to be a neutral color for things like text, when you're using text on a website or on a business card. That's not a 100 percent the case all the time, but that's a general rule and it usually gives you a basis to start with. This is just few selections of random color palettes that fit into that system. Then what are the client preferences? These things should have been addressed with the creative considerations on the brief. If there are any specific client preferences about color, that's something you should know right away so if they hate orange and they don't want to include orange, that already saves you time because that's not a color that you should be exploring. There are few things that I do to get started. The first thing is to refer to the mood board and brief. Like I said, those if you've done a thorough enough job with them should already start to inform where the color palette should go, so it should give you a general idea of what you're looking for. In this case with Maggie's mood board, the client gave me some specific color direction in terms of using greens and teals, and she also approved this board that explored some other colors. It definitely gives me several jumping off points to start from. The second thing is to look at the competition. These are some of Maggie's competitors and in this case, you don't really see a huge trend in color other than a strong use of black, gray, white, which Maggie also told me to avoid anyways. Sometimes just doing a visual analysis of the competition really helps guide you in terms of color. Sometimes you'll do this and see, oh wow, all of the client's competitors use green and that's a good place to say, okay, I'm not going to use green, I'm going to use a different color because that will just make them stand out even more. Then the last thing is just to experiment and have a little bit of fun with it. There's a ton of tools online that you can use to create color schemes and some tools with an illustrator which I'll show you when we get to the next video. Colors are really popular online video and I'll also include this in my resource document at the end of this unit. At the end, just a few questions to ask yourself once you're done with the color palette. Is it appropriate? Two, does it make sense for the audience? Does it make sense for the client? Does it make sense for the industry? Does it meet the needs of the brief? Does it fit in with the mood board? In the end, all of the work that you're creating should, number 1, answer to the brief and satisfy all of the questions, and it should also fit in with the mood board. If you copy and pasted that logo or identity system onto the mood board, it should look like it fits in there to some degree. That is it for the color overview and next up I'm going to illustrate a little bit and show you how I develop my color palettes. 6. Creating Color Palettes: Now that we've talked about color a little bit, I'm going to show you how I create color palettes in Illustrator. So let's go over to Illustrator. Here you can see I have the mood board from Maggie's projects. Then I have a couple of little swatch files set up here. I've already sampled one in green from the mood board. That's usually the first place I'd like to start, is to just try starting to sample some colors from the mood board and play around with them to see how they work. I also work with just square swatches, in my document that seems the easiest to me for me to view colors in this way and it also just corresponds to Illustrator's swatches palette really easily. The first thing I do, like I said, is sample colors. I already know that Maggie wants some combination of greens and teals and grays. So I want to stay in that area. Basically I'm just going to start experimenting. I really like this green, I want to build the palettes off of this green. This is a color that I've already pretty much decided on to be part of the identity. But I want to build out a few different palettes so that I can compare and choose the best one. I really like this image. It has a lot of the teal colors in it that she wants. So I'm going to see what this looks like, which I really like that combination. Then I need a neutral color. So I'm going to sample this color from here. I really like that option. This neutral might not work in the end because it is pretty light and I might need an additional color as well as that. But I really like this palette as an option, so I'm going to hold on to that. Then I'm going to create another one. Now this one I want to show you a different trip, so I'm going to get rid of those two colors. I still want to start out with this green. So I actually took another Skillshare class from Brad Woodard pretty recently, and I will give you a link to that at the end. He taught me a new tool here that I wasn't aware of, and it's the color guide. It's actually really awesome and I can't believe I haven't used it until now. It's really good if you have one color to start out with. I'm going to go ahead and make this a swatch in here and just drag it in. Or in case you don't know how to make swatches, you can also go to edit and create new swatch in here. So I'm selecting swatch and then I'm going to go to the Color Guide. Basically this is just a really nice tool to help you create color palettes. This gives you some options in here, as you can see when I clicked on it was already set to muted and vivid so it's showing a range based on this color that fits those two categories. You can change that in this little drop-down over here to show tints and shades, or warm and cool, and you can just play around with those different things. But the real good part about this is if you click on this little rainbow icon here, it'll bring you into this palette generator type tool. If you go into Edit here, you can change all sorts of things.You can look at this in a bar format, which I think is really nice because you get a big swatch of your colors. You could also do it with the color wheels in two different ways if you prefer to look at it that way. As you can see, I already started setting up this color in here. If I look at this with the bars here in this drop-down, you can see all sorts of different palettes built off of this color from complementary colors with just two to a second complementary palette. These are all palettes that Illustrator just generated automatically for me based of that one color, which is awesome. So I'm going to choose this complementary color and just play around with it a little bit. No, I don't want purples, but this might give me another green that I'd like to use. Then these little tools you can play around with the hue saturation and brightness and change those levels, which will give you totally different palettes in here, which is also awesome. You can see as you scroll through, this gives you really cool, interesting palette ideas that you might not have just come up with on your own. You can see this change it as well. Then you get to see the brightness. You can really play around with this endlessly. When you're satisfied with the palette, all you have to do is create a new color group in here. Just hit new color group, this button with the plus sign right here and it shows up in this side of the window, and then it will also show up in your swatches palette right here. It has its own folder, which is great. This did create this new green for me as I was playing around with it. One thing I didn't point out as I was using it is, as you're scrolling through those different numbers, the swatch that you're highlighted on will actually change. You can see how it's affecting whatever swatch or illustration or pattern that you're using on your actual screen as you play around with the colors. I'm going to go ahead and use this screen to also add the original green. Then I have two different greens to work with. I also need a neutral. I think I want a different color for this, maybe a little bit of a warmer color. This is more of a cream color than a gray. But as I said when I was explaining with creative brief, I feel like it's important to keep things open at this stage and play around and come up with something that you think feels right and also really fits the brief. So I'm not really loving this green in here, I think it's a little bit too bright. I'm just going to go into this, the color palette here and just choose something that's a bit darker, something that's more like that. I think those two things go together a little bit better. Then I go ahead and create three palettes. This one, I'm going to try sampling some more from here. This palette has another good teal, it's a little bit lighter which I also like. Then I haven't used any sort of a darker neutral. I'm going to try and find a darker neutral in this palette. There's some graze over here that I think could be good. Oh yeah, that's a great, nice medium gray. Now I have three palettes and I can mix and match these a little bit and play around with them until I get something that I think feels right. From looking at this, there's a few colors that stand out to me and it's the original green, which I really like, this new green and the darker gray. I think those three colors really represent Maggie as best as I think that they can, and they also fit into her guidelines that she suggested on the brief. I think putting these two together, with this neutral is going to be the way to go. As you can see, we'll click over to the final, and this is the color palette, I slightly rearranged things a little bit. I did use this dark neutral gray, but I also added a lighter one to the palette. As I said, I usually start out with three, but then if different needs arise based on the brief or based on whatever the client is preferring at the time, I'll add colors if I need them. So I did add a lighter gray because I think in certain applications the dark gray is going to be a little too harsh, and I want to have the ability to have some contrasts there in different pieces. I think this four-color palette is essentially all we will need and this is something that we can definitely work with, it definitely fits in with the mood board and it definitely fits the brief. So this is the way that I'm going to go for all the rest of the elements as well. That's it for color and you have a few tasks to do. As always, just ask me some questions if you have any in the classroom. In the next unit, we're going to get into typography. 7. Typography Overview: Welcome to unit 3, video 1. This is the beginning of our typography section. As with the last color section, I just want to quickly say that because this is an intermediate class, I'm not going to get in too much of the typography basics, but I will provide a lot of resources for you if you want to learn more on your own after the class is over or after you complete the unit and before you begin your work. Essentially, what we're trying to do in typography for a brand identity is develop a system that once in place can be used on a variety of different applications, from a website to a business card, and can be used consistently and also have enough flexibility that if new applications arise, you have all the tools you need to design those pieces. Before you begin, a few questions to ask yourself. Number 1, how many typefaces do you need? Two, where will the type be used? Three, what types of information will you need to express? How many typefaces do you need? I usually try to keep it as simple as possible and keep it to two typefaces. This isn't always the case because there are some identities that lend themselves to mixing of typography in different ways and there ends up being a multiple typefaces that are used in different ways in different applications. But normally, I try to keep it to two and it's usually a sans-serif and a serif that compliment each other in some way. One is used for headlines and the other is used for body copy, for example, they each have different roles. The next thing is where will the type be used? These are just a few samples of our work to show you different applications. A postcard packaging, an iPad application, a website, a brochure. You need to think about what materials your client is producing and where they're going to be seen because each has different requirements for the typography that they're going to need to use. Then lastly, what type of information do you need to express? Are they going to be writing lots of articles so you need a typeface that's going to be very readable online? Do they produce a lot of packaging? Do they produce a lot of infographics? You need to think about what that content is going to be and then determine the best typeface for each of those uses. Once you have that determined, it's all about trying to find the type that you need. The first place I look is my own computer. Since I've been working as long as I have, I've established a very large library of typography, and I keep them in FontExplorer, which is what I use to manage my fonts. I'll give you a link to that at the end. It's a really great application. There's others, but I haven't really tried too many others because I found that this suits all of my needs. The first thing I do is look through everything I have in this little message box area where you see the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. I'll put some typography in it that's going to be used for the client so that I can scroll through all the typefaces I have and view that language that's specific to the client in all of the typefaces I have and get just a quick glance at the variety and the number of choices and try to narrow down to a few things that I think could potentially work. If for some reason I need something else or I don't think anything I have is going to work, I'll look online. Now, there's a few places that I go to often and there's a few foundries that I go to often and a few shops that cell type from a lot of different foundries. This slide is representative of a few foundries that are some of my favorites. Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, Village, and Lost Type Co-op are really great foundries. Village actually does offer typeface from other foundries as well, but they have their own typefaces that they produce. These are places where you're always going to find a really good quality type. That brings me to my next point, choose quality type. This usually doesn't mean free. Free fonts, for the most part are not going to be nearly as high-quality as fonts that you pay for, and it's just the same you get what you pay for theory that applies to anything else that you purchase in life. Most of the time, the amount of work that gets put into a free font is much less than the time that gets put into one that you have to purchase a license for. Which means you're going to have many more options in the typeface, it's just going to be higher-quality overall. I always recommend purchasing type if you can. The people that create it spend a lot of time creating it and they definitely deserve to be paid for their work. There's a couple of exceptions for this that I'm personally okay with. The first is on MyFonts, they have a $0 search. If you go into the Advanced Search and select price and select $0, there are tons of high-quality typefaces that just offer one week for free. I think that's a good way to download some high-quality fonts and start experimenting with them, and that allows you to make the decision of whether the typeface is right for the project or not. In those cases, you might be able to get the client to purchase that typeface for you ahead of time if you don't have the budget on your own to purchase it to complete the work. Then Lost Type Co-op is also set up on a pay what you want model. This is great if you want to test out fonts and you want to download it for free. A lot of the fonts have different license types, where if you pay up until a certain amount, it can only be used for personal non-profit use and is required to pay above a certain amount in order to have a professional license. Pay attention to that when you're browsing the fonts, and I always try to pay for any of these fonts regardless of the license requirements, because I think that the people who spent the time making it deserve to get some compensation. That's what I recommend if you're looking for fonts on a tight budget. Now, to get started, three easy steps. Start with the logo. Start with the logo. You already chose type that goes with the logo based on the brief and the motor board. That's a good starting point. Usually, you're going to use at least one typeface from the logo as a primary typeface in the brand. It's just very clear way to associate the two together, and it just makes sense to do that. This logo actually has three different typefaces in it. The G and the M at the top, or a third typeface. That's a situation where I might just keep those, that G and that M typeface into the logo and use the other two typefaces in the different materials as I go. But that's a good place to start and it gives you a basis for moving forward. Then refer to the mood board and the brief. You always want to keep those two things in mind while you're working. The mood board might give you some ideas for different type if you want to add some more interest to the identity beyond the logo. For example, this mood board has all sorts of scrips on it, some hand lettering. Maybe that gives you an idea, "Oh, I want to try and draw a script for some display type." This is just a really great way to spark ideas. Then the third thing to do is when you pairing type, it's a learned art and in the resources section, I'm going to provide some more articles about this. FontShop in particular has a really great article series on pairing type that I think would be really helpful if it's something that you need some more work on. The two things to really consider when you're pairing type together is contrast and similarity, and you want to make sure there's enough of both for them to be a right pair. On this page, I'm looking at Elena on the left and Clavo on the right. In this case, there's just not enough contrast. You wouldn't pair these two fonts together because they are different if you look at the tiny details, but they're much too similar to put in the same context. It doesn't allow you to distinguish information in any way, and it'll just be confusing to use two typefaces like that. This is an example of too much contrast. These typefaces don't go together at all. They're definitely different so you get enough contrast, but then on the similarity side, there's just not enough similarity. You have a curvy, bulbous, wide, rounded font on the left and a very upright, angular font on the right. Most often those things are just never going to go together. There's exceptions to this, of course, if you're using a highly display font, that can be something where it's okay to have a ton of contrast because it's just going to be used sparingly. But here we're essentially looking at a headline and body copy, which is a really common practice that you're going to need to get comfortable with when you're choosing type. This is an example of typefaces being just right to pair together. In this case, these two typefaces are made by the same foundry. That's another good place to look if you're struggling with a pair, a lot foundries make type families that have a sans-serif and a serif that pair together really well. These are not technically a family, but they pair together pretty well because they're designed essentially in the same vein. One one way to check the similarity is to measure the X-height. If the X-height of the letters is pretty similar, they're most likely going to blend together pretty well. Here you can see I've measured them and the X-height is not exact, but it's very similar. That's something that's going to allow the two typefaces to just work together more harmoniously when you're pairing them in different situations. But then as you can see, there's also a lot of contrast here because one has serifs and one is totally sans. It allows the two typefaces to stand out when they're paired together so that you can call out different types of information. Now, we're going to briefly get into web typography. This is a gigantic topic that I can't possibly cover everything involved in this class, but I did want to mention it because I think it's an important consideration when you're developing an identity system. At this point, web typography technology has really advanced to the point where it makes no sense to ignore it. If your client is ever going to have a website or a website is a major part of their brand identity, this is something to definitely consider and choose type that has a web typography component. There's a lot of places to get web type. Google Fonts is a really popular one and they're free there, which is great. You can also download desktop versions of those fonts so that you can play around with them in your web design files and see how they look before they're actually up online. Then also the same foundries that I mentioned before all offer a lot of web typography options. MyFonts especially has a ton of options of typefaces that offer both desktop and web versions. their licensing is different depending on the font and it's definitely different from web to desktop. It's important to review that information before you recommend anything to your clients so that they understand how the pricing will work. But there are so many options now that you can use for both print and web that it makes sense if you're going to have any sort of web component, that you're choosing typography that is available for web usage. If for some reason you don't, if you find a typeface that really works for the identity that doesn't have a web component, I think Google Fonts is a great place to go for a font to specifically for use on the web, to find a good enough pair, something that matches it quite well. There's so many choices on Google now that you usually can find something that's relatively similar to the look you're going for and that can be used on the web. In the end, you just want to ask yourself the same questions once you've paired the type together. Is it appropriate? Does it meet the needs of the brief? Does it fit in with the mood board. Next, I'm going to show you a little bit of typography system development in Illustrator. 8. Choosing Typography: Welcome to Unit 3, Video 2, this is choosing typography. I'm just going to show you really quickly how I came up with the typography family for Maggie's identity. Let's go over to Illustrator. This is the file that I've started out with. I again, have my mood board, I have my new color palette, and I'm essentially just continually building off that initial file that I started. You'll see at the end that my Illustrator files tend to get pretty messy, but I prefer to work that way and have everything in one place. As you can see, I've also applied my new color palette to the logo, you can see how that works here, and I am starting to organize the typography. I've already pulled the two typefaces out of the logo that are here. This Herr Von Muellerhoff and Trump Gothic. This is what photography is listed out in here, and this is what the Maggie Harkov is in it. Now both of these, I know I can't use across the board. This Herr Von Muellerhoff font is very much a display font. It's not going to be readable in long blocks of text, clearly I know I want to use it very sparingly. Trump Gothic, I just personally really like in caps, but I don't like this very condensed font to be used in title case with in long blocks of copies. I know that I'm only going to use this in very specific situations. I know that I need a couple of other fonts. I need something that I can use for run and copy. She has a booklet that she gives to all her new clients that outlines all of her processes, and about her, and the packages that she offers. I know I'm going to need to write some text there. Then, I also am thinking about the vintage modern feel that she wants, which requires this mixing of typography. So I want some more contrast than what I have now, and I want a serif font also brought in the mix. At the beginning, I already know I'm looking for those two things. A serif font to use probably from our display purposes, and a sans serif to use for body copy. What I like to do is set up type specimens and just start playing around with typefaces that I think could work. I've set this up with a paragraph, and then I always set up alphabet in caps, lowercase in numbers, just so that I can get a really quick overview of what each letter form looks like in that typeface. A little trick, I have this little tool up here. It's called Lorem Ipsum. It's a great little app if you want to use Lorem Ipsum in your projects, and it just allows you to click on the number of words, lines, or paragraphs, and you just click a copy and you can paste it right into your document. Just a little trick. What I do is, I already have some typefaces activated from fond explorer. This is just an aerial right now. The first thing I'll do is just to start activating some text in here with different fonts and just play around and see how it looks. Like I said, I already went through phonics floor and picked out a bunch of things that I thought could potentially be matches for this identity. I'm going to start just highlighting them. Brandon grotesque, that could be a good option for the sans-serif that I want. I'm just going to choose regular for this, just so I can get a general idea of what this typeface looks like, and I'm going to get rid of tracking in here. There we go. I've one down, so let's set up a couple others and take a look at them. I'm going to look for the sans-serif first, and I know one other that I like is Sweet-sans, which I only have a couple of weights like this. I'm going to go with the light. Already you can see that these are similar, but different in that the X height is higher, especially in this one, but they both have a pretty rounded look. This is definitely wider, Sweet-sans, but it gives me a good comparison in these two things. Let's look at some serifs. I know the goal here is to improve upon this vintage modern look, so I want to get something that looks pretty classic. One type I feel like is Craw Modern. I have two versions of this, but I'm going to start with this. This is a really large, oversized font. But I think that this could potentially go really well. I'm going to change the size on this a little bit just because it is over powering the other ones that I have here, so that I can get a better look. That's good enough for now. Let's check out one more. Let's check out Elena. This is definitely a classic serif. I have four typefaces to look at and compare. Normally, sometimes I'll look at a ton of different typefaces. I'll look at 20, I'll look at 30 and just compare that way. But now I already have a really clear idea of the things that I'm looking for, so that allows me to limit my options from the beginning and save myself some time. Already looking at these, I know that I want to eliminate Elena. It's a really beautiful typeface, but it just doesn't really work with the vintage modern feel and it doesn't work with the other typefaces that I've already chosen to work with here. I'm just going to get rid of that. I think that this Craw is the best serif to work with. It really compliments these two display typefaces nicely, and I know that I don't love how it looks in a paragraph. The space in-between the words is a little strange because it's very wide and the typeface itself is so wide that it just doesn't really suit itself towards long blocks of copies. This is going to be another typeface that's used in more of display situations. Great, I'll have that. Now it's time to compare the sans-serifs, and I really like both of these. I think both of them can work. But since I already have three typefaces picked out, it's essentially which one pairs better with the ones that we've chosen. Now if you look at these next to each other, you can see that Sweet Sans and Craw, even though these are different sizes at the moment, have more similar proportions, than Brand and Grotesque does. They're both pretty round. If you look at the Os, their wide, rounded Os almost squished because they're so wide, and so this just automatically makes me see a connection between the two and realize that these would pair really nicely together and work really well. That leaves me with four typefaces, which I of course said is more than you want to start with. You want to start with two. This logo is definitely an exceptions as I am only using two logos to begin with, and some of the specifics on the brief just really lend themselves to using more. This is where I ended up and this gives me the building blocks in the typography system. Now I have all these different typefaces to choose from when I actually start building out the stationary pieces and other brand materials that she needs to use. So I can decide on specific circumstances for each typeface and figure out how they're going to be used at that stage. But right now, I know that I have enough different typefaces that cover all of those different needs, all of the type of information that she needs to display, and all of the applications where her identity is going to be seen. There you have it. Next up, we are going to go over graphic language, and just talk about those elements. Since we've just finished a unit, be sure to let me know if you have any questions while you start working on your type system. 9. Graphic Language Overview: Hi everyone, welcome to Unit 4, Video 1. This is the start of our unit on graphic language, and this is the overview presentation. This is one of my favorite parts of the brand identity process because you can really get creative here and you're also going to start seeing everything come together into an identity package. So just to give you a brief overview of what the graphic languages is, it just refers to a broad range of visual elements that will support the logo in the system. This could really include so many different things from patterns which I personally use all the time, to photography, illustrations, textures, icons, really can be anything you can think of that helps to support the logo and bring that identity together. So before you start, you want to have the same considerations that you've had in all the other stages of the project, where will the elements be used, how will they work together and what is appropriate? So if you're designing a pattern, you should have in your mind, it doesn't need to be definite because you're going to play around a bit when you get to that stage, but you should have in your mind, how could this pattern work with this go on the website or would this just be restricted to print materials, etc. Those are just some things you want to have in mind before you start. Let's dive right in. So there's four steps I consider for getting started. If one doesn't work for you, another one can hopefully jog your creativity and get you coming up with some fun ideas. So the first step is to look back to the logo, which is the centerpiece of the whole identity. So here's an example of one of our logo systems. This was for a company that may create products for kids and parents. This had an actual system where the logo changed and they overcame a different illustration depending on where it was used. As you can see, there's a clear circle space, I already have these illustrations in here, since there's already a lot of elements that can be used in patterns and other graphic elements throughout the identity. This is their identity system that we came up with. So we have this large system of colors that comes directly from the logo, two typefaces, and this series of patterns, which is the specific oval shape from the speckled spot logo, and then it also of course, comes with a series of icons which we feature in the logo and can be pulled out. So when you look at this, it's really pretty simple. There's a lot of colors here. But all I did is pull out elements exactly from the logo and just rearrange them in a slightly different way. The second thing you can do is look back at the mood board. The mood board has so many visual cues on it that if you're trying to find an idea for something, there's probably some sort there that can spark something. For example, on this mood board, I went back and particularly I noticed this striped stare runner in the bottom right, and these pinwheel things in the live colorfully Kate Spade ad felt a little bit like confetti to me, and there's a lot of really great patterns and visuals on here. So this is the identity that stemmed from that. As you can see, the stripe stair one are turned into this cool double stripe pattern, and that Kate Spade ad turned into this confetti pattern, and some of the photography style from the actual mood board also blended into that identity. So we use this warm, right, glowing sunlight pictures of families and people having a really good time, and you saw some of that on the mood boards, so we brought them in here. Then just consider the concept. So W&T Seafood, is a seafood manufacturer, and these may be obvious connections to make, but doing them in a fun and different way is a good way to create a unique identity. So we are using these vintage illustrations of fish and sea life throughout their identity, but we're using it in fun brighter colors, like this bright green, that's part of their identity system. So that just makes it a little bit more unique. Then we're also using a wave pattern in the background, which just gives an obvious visual reference to the ocean, but it's done in a more abstract way so that it's not over the top. Then the fourth thing to do is just experiment. As you can see I mentioned before that my illustrator documents get pretty messy, and this is an example of a screenshot from one of them. I just go all over the place in a million different directions, and just see what sticks, what I end up thinking in the end fits the best to the brief and the brand overall, and just go from there. So then once you've done all those things or any combination of those things and feel like you have enough stuff to work with, the task is to refine it. So for example, this is our identity for Kanopi Health, and we have some of the elements considered already. We've of course, already established the color palette and some of the typography, so you'll see those in there. But you'll also see some different experiments around with patterns and using the logo on top of photography and things like that. So I go from this, a very messy Illustrator document to this, where it is refined, and again, like I do with the mood boards, this is a little bit of a collage of the identity elements, which I'm going to explain a little bit more later in the next unit. So you really want a compact system here that makes sense for the applications you're going to use it in, and just make sense for the brand. So then again, just after every step, make sure you're asking yourself the same questions, is it appropriate, does it meet the needs of the brief and does it fit in with the mood board? Those identity elements, just as with the logo and the color palette and the typography, should all be able to be just copy and pasted into the mood board and look like they fit in. So that's just a good guideline to go buy. So next up we're going to go into Illustrator and I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of how I developed some of the graphic language for magazine identity. 10. Designing Graphic Language: Welcome to Unit 4, video 2: Designing Graphic Language. We are just going to dive right into Illustrator and go over everything there. As you can see in my file, I've just built upon what I had in the last unit. I still have my logo and color palette here and I've also laid out my typography so that it's a little bit more finalized. As you can see, I have a specimen here for sweet sands. I am going to be using that in blocks of copies. That's why I have this laid out that way. Then I have narrowed down to just the numbers. That's my favorite part of the typeface. I'm most likely going to be using it primarily in that way. This is my starting point. For me, when I start to develop graphic language systems, they almost always include a pattern or two. That is just something that's pretty particular to my style, it's something that's very comfortable for me. I'm not a huge Illustrator, although it's something I'm trying to get better at. But so I don't really go in that direction and I do use photography sometimes, but patterns seem to go with pretty much every project that I've worked on in some way. That's where I like to start. I just like to start playing around, and experimenting, and see where I end up in the end. My first step when I have a logo that's as detailed as Maggie's is, to look at this and figure out where I can create some patterns from these elements. There's a lot of options here. I'm going to start out with a really simple one. I'm going to use this little diamond shape that's next to photography. I think that's a pattern that could be a really neutral background for a lot of different things, and we could use it with all the colors, and in a lot of different ways. I'm going to show you how to make one pattern, and we're going to use my little diamond shape up here. This is in the dark green color. Let me just say, as a little disclaimer, there are a million ways to do this, and this is the way that I do it. It's pretty quick and easy to create a pattern out of a geometric shape like this. I'll just show you really quickly how to do one. Essentially, with a shape like this, all you really need to do to create a swatch is you need to make sure it matches on all sides. You just need to use a repeatable shape as your ground for the pattern. In this case, its either a square or a rectangle. For this particular shape, I'm going to use more of a rectangle. I just prefer the way that that's going to lay out as opposed to a square with this diamond. I'm just going to create my little rectangle and I'm not really measuring anything. This is where I just play around with it and see how things work. I take the color out of that. I'm going to align these so that they're centered. Then as you've probably noticed, I have the smart guides activated in here which you get in the View palette. So it's Command, U. This used to really annoy me, but they come in really handy with making patterns. Since I've gotten used to them, I just use them all the time. If you highlight the shape, what I'll do next is set guides up to match the shape. This is also where the smart guides come in amazingly handy because everything just snaps right to the path. That basically what I need to do is just make sure all the corners match up so that this swatch can be repeated, since this is just a very basic pattern. I'm going to take the diamond, I'm going to make another copy of it and align it up here. As you can see, another awesome thing about the smart guides is this is telling me exactly where that shape intersects with those two guides. There's no question on whether that's lined up or not. I'm going to do the same thing on all four corners. You can really feel it snap into place with the guides even if you can't see it particularly. Now, I have all my pieces in place and I basically just need to crop this artwork out from outside the edges of the shape. I'll bring this square to the front, which I set up initially, and then it'll highlight both that shape and the four diamonds on the edge. Then I'm going to go over the Pathfinder tool and hit "Crop". Then that gets rid of everything outside of that box, super easy. Then this does leave a space and a negative. I'm going to delete that just so that it doesn't screw anything up or get confused when you're filling things. Then I basically have a parent swatch. I highlighted all of these shapes. Then I'm going to go up to "Edit", "Define Pattern". Then we're just going to name this something. I'm just going to name this Diamonds 1. Name it whatever you want. Then we'll just test our pattern out. Let me draw a bigger shape and just try to fill it with that pattern. There you go. You get a nice repeatable pattern. You can change the size of this. Depending on your settings, the pattern will grow when you change the shape. If it does that and you're not happy with it, you just click on it again and it will reset. Then if you want to make one with a different color, but for some reason you get rid of this artwork, it's also really easy. You just take that swatch from the swatches palette and drag it onto your board. Then keep in mind that this does when it creates a swatch, it makes us shape outside of the bounds of it, so you do need to delete that. Then you can fill these with whatever color you want. We'll do them brighter green and then take the same steps, "Edit", "Define Pattern", Diamonds 2. Then we have two versions of it. Sometimes, I guess you're not seeing it really right here, but you'll see in Illustrator that it does look like there's some space in here, but they usually disappear when you zoom in. It's just a weird thing with Illustrator's display. You do want to double check that and make sure it is actually repeating. If you can't tell, try printing it out and that will give you a clear picture of how it works. But that's basically it. What I tend to do is just make a ton of those, and play around with them, and see what I think looks best. I end up with something like this, another Illustrator file covered with all things. I'll show you. I made a bunch of these diamond patterns in different color combinations. Then I also have will this double band here. I tried just a flat stripe, I tried a combination of stripes with the curved outer band, the straight flat band, and then the zigzags. It's a little bit modified because it's not as tight. Then I did a pattern with just those outside curves. Then I came over here and expanded the curves into a more vintagey shape that actually departs a little bit from the logo. Then we also did this fun XO XO pattern with crop and a little heart that is really suited to Maggie's personality. With all of this, I have this big range of elements, but I don't need this many pattern, it's a little much. I just play around with things and eliminate until I end up with this. What we have is a library of these diamond patterns. Obviously, those are not all going to be used at once, but it's nice to have different color options to change it up. Then we do have this lined pattern for use in various situations. The XO XO pattern is just too suited to her, to Maggie, for us not to use it. We're definitely going to use that. Then also, as you can see, as I've been building, I have a couple other logo versions that I did work on during this graphically and which section, and one thing was that she needed a watermark for her photos. We came up with a simplified version of the logo for that. Then also, we could just create a simple version of the script from her logo that can be used in situations where this huge detailed circle isn't appropriate. That's basically where I ended up. Those are the elements that I have to work with. Next up, I'm going to show you how to take everything you have and you've built an identity and bring it all together in a presentation that you can show to your clients and just give you a bit of an overview about the best way everything should be set up. 11. Presentation : Hey everyone. Welcome to Unit 5, the final unit of class. We're going to talk about presentation, and I'm going to go through how I present a brand Identity to my clients. So let's get started. Starting with the identity elements. All of the stuff that you've developed up until this point. That should look something like this to you. You should have an Illustrator document that has all of the elements put together in a way that's pretty disorganized and they need to be put into a format the client can digest easily, and hopefully give you positive feedback. I start out with everything I have here, and I actually use InDesign to create my particular presentation but you can do this in Illustrator as well. If you create multiple artboards the size of your presentation, you can just save those as a PDF pretty easily from there. I use InDesign just because I like their setup in terms of setting type biography, settings and style sheets, and things like that. Works a little better in Illustrator for me. The first thing I do is create a new InDesign document, which you can see here. Start out with a title page, and then I just, at the beginning of the presentation, go through all of the elements that we've created so far individually. First I start out with a mood board, and then I separate all of the elements that you just saw on that page into their own separate pages. I think this just helps for the client to see everything on its own and judge everything individually without being too overwhelmed. I always start out with a logo and then essentially move in the same order that we actually developed the system in. So from logos to color palette. As you can see here, I've also listed the breakdowns for every color in the different color formats. This isn't totally necessary to do right now, you can do this in the style guide later on in your process. But it is something to keep in mind, it doesn't hurt to include it. Then typography. All of these things can be broken down even more if you want to just include one tape face per page, that's totally fine as well. I use the same specimens here even though I'm not going to be using them all in this way, it just gives the client and overview of the typography that's going to be used. Then the patterns, and again, these can be separated into their own pages if you prefer it that way. Next part we're going to go back to Illustrator 4. The next thing that I like to include in the presentation is what I call an identity collage. This is pretty similar to the mood board, just using all of the elements that you've created for the system. This actually gives the client a snapshot of all of the elements in one place after they've just seen them on their own separate pages. So I just take them all into Illustrator. My documents in half by 11 to match up with my InDesign presentation. That's the size I always use just because it's a lot easier for clients if they want to print it out on their own. It's just a practical situation. All I start doing with these elements is arrange them on the page, and I just start playing around with how they can work together like this. I'll just mess around with them in a collage format like I do with the mood board until I get something that I like. It's usually a similar layout to a mood board where it's an abstract collage with some elements bigger than the other. So for this particular one, this is where I ended up. Then I just take this whole thing and copy it and paste it into my document, which you can see right here. I just think it's important for them to see everything together. But for the next part, at the same time, while it's good to see everything together like this, this isn't in reality how anything's really going to look. All of the applications that they have are never going to have all these pieces in one spot at the same time. So it's a little bit unrealistic. The next thing I like to do are some identity slides, and I'm going to go back to Illustrator to show you that. Starting out with all the elements in my collage, what I do is basically create a series of slides and I usually do three, but you can do as many as you want that are just rough layouts of how the elements might be used together. They don't even have to be for anything in particular. They don't have to be representative of a specific application, but it's just a good way to show the client how some of the elements might work together once you start developing things like their stationary, and their websites and all those other elements. I've created three artboards in an Illustrator document that are all the correct size for the presentation so that I can just copy and paste them directly into InDesign. I basically just start playing around with the stuff in here until I get something that I like. I'm going to take you over to my finals. So here's what I came up with. I usually like to start the first slide out with something that prominently features the logo. Since it is the centerpiece of the whole system, I just think that's a good intro to the slides. Throughout the slides, I want to make sure that I'm showing as many of the different elements as I possibly can without overwhelming any one slide and using two elements at once. Started out with a logo and just showing simply how that could potentially interact with a pattern, and then for my second slide, I have tried to show a few different elements. I'm showing this other XOXO pattern and some more of the colors in a solid format which we haven't really seen yet. Then I wanted to show some more of the typography that isn't in the logo, so I just added this piece of text here which just shows the locations that she serves and just came out with that layout. For the third one, I wanted to make sure I got some of Maggie's photography in here, and that's especially because we have another logo to use as a watermark. Then we still have some other patterns that I thought could be good to show, including the stripes and we're showing the diamonds again. This is just good because it also shows how two patterns can interact together, and just gives it another field with the photography. Then all I do is just copy each of these directly into my InDesign document, which I will show you now. I put these directly following the collage, and you'll notice I take away all of the information at the top of the screen so that you can just focus on these elements and there's no distractions. Then just go one after another, and that is it. That is the end of the presentation. Just to go back to the beginning quickly, I just wanted to mention that one thing I didn't really talk about is that I do always include some data at the top of the screen, that just identifies what section of the presentation you're in and the general. The project, the date, things like that. I think it makes it easier for the client to refer back to when they're reviewing on their own, and also sometimes I do include some background information from the brief, and notes I have about each piece of the puzzle. This wasn't necessary in this situation just because of where I was in the project with Maggie when I sent this to her, but that's definitely something to keep in mind depending on how your client is. If they're better reviewing things on their own as opposed to discussing with you, it might be better for them to have all those notes to refer to after the fact. So that could be something to include. I'm just going to click through everything once more quickly for you so you can see how it all came together. I have my intro slide, then the mood board, primary logo, the secondary logo, the watermark, the color palette, typography, patterns, the identity collage, and the identity slides. That's it. So that concludes all of the presentations for class. Now it's time for you to bring everything you've worked on throughout each of the units together and put your presentation together and share with us so we can provide feedback and learn from each other's projects. Please definitely let me know if you have any questions. Thanks. Hey everyone. I'd just like to take a minute to introduce the official sponsor of this class, Squarespace. Now that you've completed your brand identity project, one of the logical next steps will be putting it into place on a website. Not all of us are skilled in web design or have access to a developer. In that case, Squarespace is really an excellent option. 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