Design 'Ride Along' - Full Brand Identity Project

1. Introduction: In this class, I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted to take you on a virtual design rider, long as if you're here with me in the studio and I'm going to review one of my favorite projects. And actually take you through the process from start to finish, behind the scenes. Now what will likely make this class different to others? Like it is the scope and the scale that I tend to work at. If you're new to brand identity design or perhaps you're just considering a career in this in future or this is going to be like virtual work experience. It's going to give you a really valuable look behind the scenes. Or if you're further along or even a veteran brand identity designer. Well, I'm sure like me, you really enjoy comparing your own workflow to others. Seeing if you can pick up some tips, some insights along the way. Hey, my name is Jason Miller. I'm a freelance graphic designer and brand identity expert from London. Although I'm London based, I have the privilege of working with clients from all over the world, from New York to Hong Kong. I've been freelancing for over 12 years now for the last seven years with this as my sole source of income. Now, the project I've chosen to walk you through this class is a full brand identity project called the Luxury Property Show. I recently realized, I now get over 1 million views a month on my Pinterest account and the pins I've shared, showcasing branding for the luxury property show some of the most widely viewed. I get asked a lot of questions about how I developed this particular project, so I thought this would be a great project to run through. As an example, I'm ready for this. If you're ready, let's get started. 2. The Client & Project Background: The client and background. Always good to get a bit of a background to the project. Who was the client? Well, the luxury property show, if you're interested, investing in a luxury property, this is a one stop shop. They put together this incredible event and they can not only show you a huge range of often exclusive luxury properties in various countries and investment hotspots around the world. But they also at the show will introduce you to suppliers you might need from real estate agents to tax advisors, currency exchange specialists. So everything you need if you're interested in luxury property in one place. As you can imagine, they serve very exclusive, affluent clientele. And the kind of projects I've worked on in the past, I thought this was a really good fit for my portfolio. It's a kind of sector and industry I felt I knew quite well. So how did the client find me? Well, actually, I had already done some work for a parent company of theirs. This is one of the reasons. Repeat business for a freelancer, for a small studio. It's almost a lifeblood of your business. So I'll show you the work I did for the parent company, which is the smart currency exchange. I produced a range of collateral for them. This brochure I'm showing you here was just one of those items. Apparently, when they were internally reviewing some of this work I created for them, this project got spotted by those who work on the luxury property show. So one thing led to another and I was actually introduced to that side of the team. So a great example of putting your best work out there, kind of paying off in the long run. Make sure everything that leaves your studio, if possible, it's something you're proud of and often that will lead to good things in future as it did for this project here. So obviously, as I looked over the brief for the luxury property show, I thought this is perfect. This is just the kind of brand that I want to work on. So I was happy to work out some terms and accept. So what was the brief? Well, my client wanted me to do, it was actually an abbreviated form of a brand identity package. I offer. I tend to put my offerings into packages because then clients can compare the most popular options and they'll see this is what I need, this is where I fit. And that gives you a starting point in terms of cost of time frame. And then you I would customize for them, that package based on their specific requirements. So that's an approach I actually picked up from my time working in the photography industry and I found that works well. Give clients some idea of what the common options are and then bespoke it from there. Gives you a great starting point. This was to be an abbreviated form of that full brand identity package I produce. There would be a little bit of research and strategy involved, which I'll share with you in a future lesson. The main key deliverables would be the logo for the luxury property show itself and this very attractive brand mark we created. We'll take a more in depth look at what I created, the final outcome of a project soon to show you the starting point. This was the logo they were using and trading with when they approached me. Quite cliche doesn't particularly feel fitting for high end luxury. As in the fontsre. A little bit shaky. It's not a terrible logo, but a little bit cliche with a little roof framing, just a little bit obvious. While it says luxury doesn't actually feel overly luxurious. That was the starting point. That was the key deliverable for them. They really wanted a new logo and I think I actually convinced them to expand the scope a little bit. They wanted to do just logo design, and I think I convinced them. Let's build around that. Let's at least take a look at your strategy, your target audience. Let's build brand identity. That's really what you need. A consistent look and feel, as is often the case, you might have to convince your client. But you don't just need a logo. Logo is just one part of an overall brand identity. So I can actually share a little bit of a correspondence from this project with you. The contact I was put in touch with part of their internal marketing team who was tasked with relaunching the logo for the luxury property show. She said to me, essentially, we need to create an icon that has luxury in it for trademarking purposes that was non negotiable. The logo itself, it had to clearly say luxury. And then the blank she left at the end. The intention was, as she said here, the blank needs to be able to be easily edited. So I guess updated to reflect what the company does for luxury property show, for luxury cars, for luxury wine selection. Actually, a little bit of brand architecture involved here and future proofing it so that any future divisions or subdivisions, they wouldn't have a headache, there would be a portion of a logo, you could just easily swap a range of different words in which is often a requirement for clients. Interestingly, although this was quite a strong, remember an internal referral, so if they'd already looked at work I had done for them, I had the best reference you could possibly get, which is someone within their business saying, yes, you know, we had a good experience with this guy. But she's asked here, have you done any work on a luxury brand before or anything like what I described that we could look at? So as is often the case, a client might want to see something that really just reassures them it's close enough to what they're looking for, that it assures them you could do the same. Again, I accommodated that request. There are already lots of examples on. What I have to say is quite a well curated website that I've put together my portfolio. You can actually sort it to narrow down to the style you're looking for. Don't be offended. If someone's seen your portfolio and they still ask you, could you share some appropriate projects? It's not that they haven't looked through your work. Sometimes they might be expected to pitch on your behalf if there are two or three different brand identity experts they're considering working with, they have to go and pitch their preferred options if they want to work with you. They might not be the final decision maker. They might have to run you and your work past a larger team or decision makers. So I believe that was the case with this project. And so to help someone out, you want to flag, it's not finding something maybe they haven't seen before in your portfolio. They want you to pick essentially what do you think is going to win this pitch? Which two or three projects could I take into a room? Shoves off and it's going to look like a good fit. It's going to hopefully get you the job a little bit that happens behind the scenes and it's worth having an understanding of that. So that if you're pitching to a company with multiple decision makers, whoever your point of contact is, you're actually letting them pitch on your behalf. To an extent, I'll show you the projects I picked to center because perhaps that's a useful insight. I actually picked out this one for the portrait boutique. I thought it had a really classy, luxurious feel. I know that this is a boutique photography studio. They actually share a lot of a similar client base. The clients who do invest in luxury property. I thought I'd show this off as a good example of a luxury brand and the process. I also shared a packaging project. Now the reason for this just because it was such kind of in your face, high end luxury. And I knew if they were looking for something that would be quite striking, this wasn't a perfect fit in terms of style, this was quite over the top luxury and it was for a client with an audience we were envisioning in Dubai in the Middle East. Luxury takes on a different tone over there. But I just wanted to get across, I do work on bleeding edge luxury brands. And then the other projects, I decided to show another one that was kind of over the top luxury I felt they'd seen, they'd worked with me on their more corporate brand. I wanted to show I can bring luxury to the table. So this brand here, I thought was a great example. The logo is, we did this rich complex logo, of course you have to have simpler versions of that logo that you can display at different sizes. I won't go into that. This client is actually based in the penthouse of Harrods and their clients are absolutely the clients that the luxury property show are hoping to serve. I could have picked other projects, but I I looked at a keyword in her request, Could you show us work you've done on luxury brands? And I wanted to overshoot that. I wanted to go over the top to reassure them I don't just do corporate work. I can definitely work on something that's highly luxurious. So I hope my kind of thinking is useful to you there. I'm sure there are many times you're asked to send some projects for a pitch and you're not sure what to pick or why. So that's the way I reason through that choice. So to kind of wrap up this background, I've told you a little bit about the client, how they found me, and the way we kind of negotiated both. The scope, we'd work to some examples of previous work I've done to reassure the client and the decision makers the next step in any project, you've got to have a contract. Even though this was a larger brand I'd worked with before. I'd worked with a parent company and we already had contracts in place. I wanted a new contract for this sub brand. And sometimes even if it's a large new project I'm working on for the same brand, I'll create a new contract for that. You don't want to leave anything to chance and never feel embarrassed to do the right thing professionally. Clearly outline what your obligations are, what the client's expectations are, what's included, the costs for any extras, any extra revisions, any extra scope required. You've got to have all clearly outlined in a contract, and that won't scare a client off. That often reassures a client that you're a professional, you know what you're doing, and I don't think it's a negative. I think it's actually seen as a positive. So you're probably quite excited, you know, you want to shake hands to say, yes, I'll do this for you, but send across the contract and I also take a 50% deposit. So I think that reflects the kind of shared risk of any creative project. Design is subjective, so you could produce award winning work and your client could, for any number of reasons, either put the project on indefinite hold or not be keen on the ideas you've presented. So you need something to at least partially cover the time you're about to invest, trying to solve their design problem for them. Lastly, I just wanted to mention some of the challenges I identified. This project would present as a larger brand with a physical show taking place, lots of printed collateral, there would be lots of touch points. So sometimes I push for boat out. When it comes to complexity in logo design, I'm quite an advocate for that. As long as a logo, when it's reduced very small or shown in different situations, you get the key components through. I'm kind of not against adding a little bit of extra flare that maybe is only noticeable at larger sizes, but with this particular project, that just wouldn't be the case. This needed to be something simple clean, but would produce very consistently across a wide range of media. So that was a first potential challenge and a challenge that many of your design jobs will share. Next the fact, as one of the larger kind of businesses that I tend to work with, there would be lots of decision makers, It wasn't just my point of contact or the little team I was working with. This had to be approved all the way up to the top of the company and the parent company. You've got to factor that into your quote and to the time you're expecting to spend. And one last challenge was the previous logo. While we wanted to create something fresh and new, we did have to consider the old logo. We didn't want to create something that was so different. Existing clients would wonder if it was a completely different company. We needed to have some kind of nod back to that original design. I think I've given you plenty, maybe too much background on this project, but I think it's really important to understand the overall bigger picture. And then the decisions that I make as we run through the rest of the project will probably make that bit more sense. 3. Research & Strategy: This should be the first real stage in any project wherever the scope possibly allows it. At the very least, you need to do some research yourself to get to know your client. Ideally, you'll actually want to look at their target audience, the messaging they're hoping to convey. Without giving yourself enough context for the design your commission to create. You really can't win. You'll then someone who's just creating a logo to look pretty, you want to aim a bit higher than that. You want to try to bring a bit more value to the table for your client. At the very least, get them to fill out a simple project form and think about the messaging they want you to convey. But at best, I will get the client to include in the scope, me going away, doing a bit of independent research, and then presenting an articulate strategy to them. So I'll run you through in a few moments the kind of end deliverable, this PDF that I'd like to share with my client, which just articulates my understanding of what they're hoping to achieve when it comes to messaging, for example, your clients would often be able to provide you maybe just a bullet pointed list. Here are our brand messages. But few of those clients have fought about a primary message supporting messages. They haven't organized that into a clear hierarchy. When you're designing identity, it's crucial to have that organized so that if you can't convey five different messages in one element, which message is most important, what needs to be the overriding message that comes through, and which secondary messages support that? All of this I cover in the document I present. But first things first, you have to actually meet and get the answers from your client. Often since Covid, I'll do a meeting via Zoom, some of my clients, they'll actually prefer to just fill out a project form in their own time. If they communicate better in written form, I prefer to speak, but it's okay if they just want to fill that out. As long as I get the answers I'm looking for. Ideally a meeting, a discussion of some form. So with a luxury property show, I was able to meet them at their offices, Lovely offices in Central London. Went there in person, met with a team of two or three of them. And I'll give you some idea of the kind of questions I like to ask. An open ended discussion is nice. Sometimes they'll have prepared everything you will need. But it's good to be armed with some good questions if nothing else, just as talking points to get things started. So these are some of the questions I'd like to ask just in case anything has been missed. What are the project deliverables your client's expecting? I asked them to give me a little bit of a background of their business at a high level overview. In their own words, sometimes that's quite insightful. Obviously, you can do your own research, look at their website or other materials they might provide. I'll ask them about the goals and objectives, not for the business, but for the branding. Do they want to increase the perceived value of the business? Are they hoping to increase brand recognition? What do they hope will come from this investment of time and money they're putting into the new brand identity? I'll ask them about their target audience, their demographics. Sometimes there's more than one audience. You might have to separate that into different groups. I'll ask them which existing brands might appeal to their target audience, not competitors. What watch do they wear? Where do they shop for their clothes, what car do they drive, things like that. I'll try to dig and ask a little bit more about the target audience. Get as much detail and information about that as I can, because that's really who this design needs to appeal to. I'll dig into value proposition, what are the key selling points, the USP, if possible, of the brand? I'll ask them to provide key brand messages in no particular order at this stage. That's something they've often not articulated yet. Of course, I'll ask them about their competitors. I'll ask them to mention a few brands they find inspirational. Lastly, I do almost a little quick fire around and I'll ask some questions about the intended tone they think is appropriate. Now, this is subject to change and I let them know that. But sometimes the initial reaction, their insights, are quite useful. Although the meaning of this is really changing in the modern world and modern language, there is still loosely a masculine or, or feminine feel to design. The way we understand that is of course, continuing to evolve and change. But would they align it as feeling more feminine, or masculine or gender neutral? Which is now the popular response I get to that. Young or mature, luxurious or economical, that was an obvious one for this particular brand. Modern or classical, playful or serious, stylized or understated, simple or complex, and subtle or obvious. Your client may not be able to answer all of these questions. That's fine, but these are great talking points. It's going to really help prepare a solid brief for a project and also get your client thinking about these things. Now, if I show you the PDF, I present to the client this strategy summary. This is the same every time. This is a little background of what we're trying to achieve with the strategy. I noted in this particular case a key requirement for the project. Let me just zoom in a little bit so you can see this more clearly. A key requirement is that a brand mark is created, which is unique enough to be trademarked within its business sector. The logo must also be versatile enough to work with a wide range of potential sub brands. For example, just including that in there, I can't tell you how much kind of confidence this gives the client. But you were listening that you've identified what their kind of key requirements are, always something good to include so they know you're on the ball, You've been listening to them. This is a little visual map of the style and tone. They indicated we wanted to aim for something that's more important. I'll put a little larger on the page. I'll give a bigger weight then less important factors, smaller. This is a map of the style and tone. I like to put together the explanation underneath for me, that's copy and paste. That's something I include whenever I send this document out. It feels like quite a meaty, valuable document. But actually I'm only customizing little parts of this every time. But it's nice to provide your client something that feels substantial. Brand messages. As I explained, I like to arrange these into a little hierarchy for this particular project. The overriding brand message was the brand feels luxurious and exclusive. That's it. If nothing else comes across that has to across every touch point, then key messages that come across as strongly as possible and back up. That primary message is that the brand is trustworthy. There's a high quality to everything the luxury property show do and they're a professional, true professional company. These messages give you some steer and some indicators as you come to decision making points creatively throughout the process. If for example, you're exploring different fonts and you find a font that looks really unique but it doesn't look very professional, looks a little too laid back. That key message we looked at, that the company has to come across as professional, Something that's overly relaxed wouldn't be appropriate. It is really forming a brief for yourself and something you can refer a client back to and say, hey, look, this was the objective we set out to meet. And this is why I think the solutions I'm proposing meet these objectives. It means instead of a discussion being which of the options you present are your clients favorites, which one does the decision maker personally prefer? They'll have a much more objective discussion. Which of your concepts tick? Most of these boxes, which are communicating to our target audience correctly. That's really valuable to steer the project in that direction. And you do it at this early stage by putting this preparatory work in. So a few other messages we've included there under the supporting messages heading. Helpful, reliable, well connected, international, reputable. Not all of these are expected to be communicated in the logo. That would almost be impossible. But as you're shaping the brand as a whole, you're just bearing some of these factors in mind. Some of them if you were working on a larger scope, like if you're involved with a web design or some of their marketing material, you may suggest imagery that conveys some of those supporting messages. Or you might recommend that's actually put across in the copy or the headings on a website, for example. Lastly, because this was an abbreviated form of a document I usually share, we look at positioning. Now positioning is absolutely key. I've found some of my clients are often the smaller boutique companies. They'll see themselves as being either the absolute best or offering the greatest value. Often that's not the case, There might be someone who rightfully so charges more than them or someone that's just able to offer a lower price. Often a company needs to find where they need to sit in the middle. Sometimes, if you relate to them, and I do that in this document, the expectation that that intended positioning is going to create. That sometimes makes them realize, okay, that's not the expectation we want to create. For example, for the luxury property show the way we wanted to position them. I'd put under client expectations, clients would expect a great degree of personal attention. Now for them, that was bang on. They have account handlers very happy to invest personal attention in each and every client. But if this were a different brand and perhaps they had something like an online store and they just wanted volume, they wouldn't be able to stop and give each client personal attention. So that wouldn't be an expectation they want their branding to create. So sometimes a strategy goes quite deep into business management and really to do a good job being a brand identity designer, you need to understand business, You need to understand positioning. You really need to get to understand how different businesses and brands are going to work. So that you can give good recommendations to your clients. So some of your larger clients may be experts themselves. They'll feed this information to you. But I found it's often quite valuable to, at the very least, relay this past them. And sometimes you make a suggestion that's really valuable to them. So that's it. On the strategy front, I also include a little back page with next steps to give a client an overview of a project. The stage is to come, so you'll notice I don't include any deadlines. I'm not saying I'll have the initial concert ready by a certain date. I will kind of loosely advise them when to expect something, but I always like to just take the project a step at a time. I think deadlines can create a lot of unnecessary stress, unless you really do have a hard deadline that's not avoidable. And then you might want some dates to ensure the project stays on track. But otherwise, if your clients, for example, after I share the initial concepts, need to have an internal meeting and it takes from a few days longer because they're very busy at the time. Having deadlines that you may miss just adds unnecessary pressure. I work on the basis the client wants this as soon as possible. I obviously want to progress for the project as quickly as I can. I get the balance payment at the end. On that basis, we just work through a stage at a time. But we'll allow each step as long as it needs. As we come to each step, I'll let the client know when to expect the next stage in the project. That's it for the research and strategy, which may be a lot to get your head around, but it's crucial to delivering a good final outcome. In the next lesson, we'll do the fun part, which is diving into some initial concepts. 4. Initial Concepts: We come to the initial concepts. Often it's certainly the case in my own portfolio. If you were to look through projects I've worked on, you would see the end result. You might read a little summary and description of the journey we took, but you would have no idea the steps and the stages and the iterations that actually led to that end result. Hopefully, I can take away some of the mystery by giving you a behind the scenes look at the concepting stage from beginning to end. So I'm going to walk you through two PDFs. I actually share both of these with most clients. Now, I've kept out anything that's really rough, that really didn't work. But I leave a lot in because I like my clients to actually feel a part of this journey with me. I like them to share in the kind of successes as well as see the effort I've put in to trying things that didn't work in my experience, while could overwhelm a client if you're not careful, in most cases, they really appreciate that. This is what I like to call my process, PDF. I'm not going to open this in Illustrator, but that's what I work in Adobe Illustrator CC. And I'll work on Artboards and I'll put together and explore different options. I always start with a type and font exploration. I will literally take the brand name and tagline. If a tag line or descriptor is being included, I will throw that into as wide a range of fonts as I can. Sometimes I have my favorites that I tend to revisit, but I'll try to include a nice versatile range here. And just visually helps me compare and zero in on which font might be appropriate, so there's nothing really inappropriate on this page. These are all options that, in theory, meet at least some of the tone and the style and the messaging we're hoping to convey. So that's always the first step. I always start by doing that with a project. Now, I didn't do any sketches for this project. I'll show you if I switch cameras, I've got a ipad Pro and the Apple pencil, which I absolutely love for some projects. Just open an example for you. I absolutely would show you there. Hopefully that comes through, okay? Would begin by sketching out symbols. Sometimes that's the best way to get the ideas from your brain onto something tangible. But in this case, I felt I could actually dive straight into Illustrator. I wanted to try things out to do the letter L as a focal point and some ideas that I knew would just be faster to render on the computer straight away When I'm playing with simple elements and geometry, which I often do, I don't feel there's any benefit to trying to sketch that first. I think you can smash through so many different iterations and versions on the computer. That's where I've gone first of all, in this case. So very early on I liked this idea of taking V L. They definitely wanted a brand mark symbol they could use as well as the full logo that says the luxury. I really liked this idea of taking V L and almost viewing it in two parts geometrically. An L is almost symmetrical, depends on the font. If you divide it diagonally. Started to explore that idea really early on. If I pop open, just to remind you, this is the existing logo the client was using with a symbol that was really cliche and so generic it would be almost impossible to identify the roof they'd use there over any other kind of roof or symbol. So there's really no brand, just a logo that they were using. I was keen to create both a logo and a strong brand mark they'd be able to use going forward. The idea here on the very first page, I mean this almost never happens. This was actually unknown to me. This would be the idea for a brand mark with some future refinement and tweaking that we would end up using. It goes to show, sometimes it does happen, sometimes the initial direction you head is the right one. There's no kind of clever hidden meaning to this. I was just looking at geometry and perhaps a way to add almost a free D feel to this L. I thought perhaps it would look like some sash or ribbon. There was no clever secret meaning behind this. I was purely exploring this concept in terms of that luxury aesthetic we wanted to convey. You can see I've included here, and I do this sometimes at the bottom right, an idea of how that might evolve into another element that brand could use. I envision some subtle background element where again, we followed those diagonal sashes. If I scroll on, you'll now see some of the other ideas and concepts I explored. I wondered if we could somehow do something like this, which I thought was maybe quite clever. I just knew I couldn't use an L without doing something unique to it. There's no way the L on itself could serve as a brand mark. It needed to have something different done to it to make it identifiable. Placing it intersected with the logo type. That was quite a nice idea of placing that within a circle, it forms a badge logo. That's one direction I explored. Then some symbol expiration. You can see the key for me is iterating as quickly as possible. To explore as many options within reason as you can. All sorts of ideas I explored here, I like the idea of a circle that grounded the symbol or the logo, almost softened it a little, and at the same time looked at using something like a diamond. Diamond is often seen as a strong, sometimes luxurious shape. You can see the direction I had with this in the bottom left. Even some calligraphic versions of an L using strip fonts, explored all sorts of possibilities here. Quite liked some of these ideas, but I did feel this was decorating. Maybe we're putting that same regular L just within a few geometric shapes to try to create something unique. With this one, I thought in the top right, perhaps loosely leaned toward the idea of it being a building, a property. The L is within a property. You can see where I was going with this. It's not that I just got to this first page. The first idea I had pitched it, and that's it. Project finished. There was a exploration. A lot of ideas generated that didn't work, but I didn't feel appropriate, but I thought were valuable enough to run past the client, maybe they would have chosen one of these and we developed it into something stronger. This I quite liked. I thought this did have a luxury tone to it. These versions here shown on the reverse background, particularly, you know, I thought that really in a very simple way that just felt luxurious and elegant. Definitely a potential winner there in some different versions of that. You can see when it comes to the font I'm pairing with the proposed brand mark. Trying something that's very minimalist and modern in one case, and then in others, trying something that's a little more traditional, classically luxurious, presenting a range of options that a client will be able to compare. Then this here is actually the other portion of the concept we decided to go ahead with in the bottom left and right. I'll zoom in a little, you can get a better look at these. I like carrying this idea across that L. I explored initially with the Sasha diagonal divider, carrying that on and applying it to one or two of the other letters in the logo type over X. And the Y felt that was really distinct, unique, and eye catching. Actually, this became the concept we went ahead with for the logo itself, the standalone symbol for the L. With a little bit of work and development, as I'll show you in a future lesson, that became the brand mark, which could be used in a standalone form, but is hidden subtly within the core logo itself, which is a real win win. If you can make that happen. You've seen behind the scenes work I do, as I've mentioned, present this PDF to the client so they can share in the journey. They can appreciate the options I send them aren't kind of the first things that have sprung to mind. But I also share this PDF which I entitle the Selected Concepts. These are the concepts I'm really pitching. This was actually the last page. This concept which they selected, I add some notes underneath, so people have different, I guess, opinions and methods on pitching. I don't go and actually pitch this in person or on a video call because I feel it puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on the climb. They're often quite nervous about whether they're going to like what you've done or not. They've invested a lot of time and money, so I feel it's quite nice to let them have a first look without that pressure, without you kind of looking and hanging on their reaction. I'll send it across, I'll let them have a good look through, discuss it internally, and then I'll meet with them virtually or in person mostly virtually these days to get their feedback and to talk through it, because I'm not going to be there to maybe explain the nuance of each proposed concept. I include that in the notes. I don't write a lot. As you can see, it's just a paragraph or two, but I feel that's enough that the client gets the logo at the same time. If you have to defend a concept, if you're worried, what if I'm not there to defend the idea? If it needs defending, sometimes that means it's not a strong enough idea. If the client can't look at it and read your short description and see, ah, that's clever. Yes, I think that works. Then maybe you need to keep looking. Maybe it wasn't strong enough. So this is the method I like to use, and that was the case with this project. Both PDFs were sent across. This is going a few years back now. I actually try to send a maximum of free concepts to choose from. Now in this case I sent 66 is quite a lot. I think that maybe did me a disservice in terms of giving them quite a difficult decision to make nowadays. I would send just free, but these are the concepts I picked out to share. So there's this one, that brand mark is what we actually decided to go ahead with but not the logo type. This one here, which I felt was quite strong. This one which is a little bit generic, I think. Yes, the diamond maybe represents luxury, but nothing award winning there, that's for sure. This one I really liked and actually the client quite liked this as well. This was a runner up this one, not one of my favorites. This is where if I were doing this project today, I wouldn't have selected that concept. I would have shared it so the client could see it. But I wouldn't have given it my endorsement. Because if a client went ahead with this version, I'd actually have been a bit disappointed, which is a silly risk to take. Then lastly, this one which they really liked and we took ahead and developed further. I hope having a little look behind the scenes at both what I show and share to the client and my own internal process. The fact I don't do sketches for every project. If it's something that's going to use primarily fonts and shapes that I can throw together faster on the computer, I'll do that. I explore a lot, explore a lot of options. Even if I found something I quite like, I'll explore until I feel I'm presenting at least three strong options to the client. So I hope it's useful to have that little look at my concept in process behind the scenes. In the next lesson, we'll look at what I do next. How the client reacted, and how I develop this logo further. 5. Developed Concepts: Now we come to the development phase. Our client is delighted with one of the concepts you've presented. Wants to grab an idea from another concept, see if the two are compatible. An ideal start for the next phase. What happens next? What do you include in that next stage so that you're not looking at too many different factors at once, but you are progressing that project forward toward the finish line. Now to remind you of the scope we're working at is not just to create a logo, it's the overall brand identity. We'll certainly be looking at supporting fonts, we'll be looking at colors, we'll be looking at the overall look and feel we want to create. I won't open this in Illustrator because I think you can see much the same thing if I share the PDF I output and I share with my client. This is what I shared in the next stage of the process. The first page, I've actually tidied this up and refined it a little bit and privately, I don't think it's worth me showing you how I did that. There's no great techniques for me to share. This is really simple stuff. Technically, I've literally just outlined the font that I like, obviously checked and balanced the letter spacing, the kerning made sure I'm happy with the balance and the hierarchy overall, I quite like this idea of luxury seeming huge. It seems so huge because of the size of the property show and verb which starts this off. I like verb being offset to the left. Even though property show underneath is centered depending on the size. This is used that I did create variations where that descriptor underneath property show was a little larger and bolder, just a very small sizes. We made sure it was always visible. Really liked this in concept, it was quite easy to produce. There's no great technical lessons I can teach you about putting this together. It's literally using the shape builder, outlining the type once I was happy with it and then subtracting away these diagonal subtractions, they're at the same angle. I did use a variety of sizes. I use a smaller size for the portion at the bottom of the L, I subtracted, and then a larger one higher up the L. And that is the same size I've used to subtract from the x, V, Y. I guess the lesson here is that a logo doesn't have to be technically complex. You've not got to create something that your client maybe couldn't have technically created themselves. That's not the objective. That's being clever. Just for the sake of being clever, Sometimes you'll see designers and it seems like every logo they produce, there's some gridding system and geometry going on. And they've got out protractors and compasses. And if that's needed, if you're creating a symbol and you need to make sure it's got those geometric foundations, then that's great. But if you're working on something like this, just have the client's best interests at heart. You don't need to be clever just for the sake of being clever. Sometimes the simple approach is actually the best and most effective in this stage. Here, it's looking very refined. I just clarify on this page. This is a standalone brand symbol we're planning to use quite like the use of a different color for the lower portion, that opens some interesting options for the larger brand identity. Then we've got the refined full logo lockup shown two different sizes here. This was actually unique enough that it could and has been trademarked, which was the main objective of the client that could trademark something that's unique, that includes certain words. Mission accomplished. Sometimes I think designers imagine that to make something unique, you've got to do something really, really different. Something almost unusual that nobody else would have thought of. This goes to show you could do something as simple as this. Just a few little custom subtractions from beautiful logo type, careful balancing and positioning. And that for this client, was a perfect logo, was just what they needed. I'm really pushing that quite hard, but I want to get the point across. You don't have to try to be clever, don't be afraid to propose something that's really simple. Because we were quite happy with the logo itself. I moved on to explore color and supporting fonts for the climate. This was a first piece of color inspiration. This, after some discussion with the team and their initial steer was, I think they actually shared this picture. They said maybe this could form some inspiration. Luxurious, deep red tones. So this is a little mock up page I created here. Shared this as part of a PDF. We've shown the logo featuring those colors, a reversed version, important to include the brand mark with those same colors. A little bit of dummy text to show those supporting fonts that I would recommend they use a background element. We're carrying the idea of those diagonal lines. I think I would have liked it to be a bit more subtle than this. It's actually come out a little too strong there, but you get the idea. We're showing the potential now of the identity we're crafting. It's more than just getting a logo approved. We're looking at the whole look and feel and the potential of this as an identity. A nice range of mocked up pages here, this one with an appropriate image in the background. A little page here to demonstrate the various elements I feel we should use and the way we might use them. Another color route they wanted me to explore. They had suggested maybe blues golds and I found this image. I often, if you find an appropriate stock image, you can color drop And the tones in that image that I think subliminally make it feel fitting to you. This was a scene of a nice luxurious yacht. The interior has been designed in a certain way by interior designers. The tones present in an image like that, I think can give you a really good starting point to explore some fitting brand colors, often if the colors within an image look like they're harmonious and they're working well, that's quite a nice little hack for picking out some complimentary colors without maybe opening up a color wheel and fiddling around with that quite an organic, natural way to pick out a pleasing color harmony. This is a nice little time saving hack I've used on quite a few occasions. Now you can see the results in these mock up pages. If I position it just there, you'll see I'm suggesting that blue would work maybe as an accent color, but most of the focus is on the gold. For black, for white. A few more mock ups here. I mean, I do prefer this actually without for blue. I think just for black. White and gold works very well. But wanted to accommodate the client's request? Yes, for more of a blue is used. I think the less I like it, but those were the options I sent initially. So what happened? Well, sent the PDF across. Give a client a little bit of time to discuss internally. They came back and really loved the logo we'd selected, love the Id, suggestions for the fonts, supporting elements, love of brand mark, but the colors not working for them. And I agreed. So in the next PDF, which I'll share with you now, this is almost another little mini stage. And sometimes in the development period, things will go back and forth a little. This time what are more obvious but maybe subtle, luxurious colors, we looked at using some platinum and black and white combination. That was quite nice. You can see some mock ups demonstrating that here. This one went down quite well, I think was almost selected. I'll go through these at some pace just so you can see the different options. Then a different route where they wanted to use a softer gold and a softer blue. I think I advised them that might be wise. Why did the previous blue not work? I said, well, I think it was a little too strong. Overpowering. We tried more of a gray blue here that would complement almost champagne gold tone. I think this was quite effective. This definitely worked well. I think this could potentially have been chosen as the final color root. But as you'll see, we went on to explore just a few more options. This is actually the root they really fell in love with. I think the company, the brand has its foundations in the UK. And a British racing green as it's called, it is quite a popular color in luxury circles. You'll see a lot of usage of that color. This was a more muted variation of that I explored for them, I felt the true British racing green. It's been over used and I felt it might overpower the gold a little. Really light with champagne gold. Here we have a muted British racing green with champagne gold. You can see some of the mock ups here. I think the work really nicely. Some adjustments had to be made to the gold. Particularly, you probably noticed at the moment, if you're looking at this on a bright screen, the gold really doesn't have enough contrast against a white background. That was a tweak to be made later. You can see this is starting to look really good. Then lastly, we had a black, white, platinum combination. This was okay, again, this would have worked nicely, but we just felt that green gold combination was that bit more distinct. The last PDF I sent, when they selected that option, said we're happy with it. You can see here slightly darker gold has been used. These are actually two different colors. The champagne gold on the left is much lighter than this version that's been used on the right, two different tones. It's funny, your brain doesn't spot that they're different when you see them on different backgrounds on the same page. But that's an optical illusion. These are actually two completely different gold tones. Again, the background pattern here, I would apply it maybe half this capacity because it does interfere a little with legibility when you're trying to read. I think that's just a little overpowering. But this was to showcase the idea and I felt very happy with it, and so did the climate. So that was the development phase. The options we've selected got approved. What comes next? Well, depending on the project scope and the deliverables, you start to produce some of those specific items. In the case of this project, it was a few items of stationery. And I'll show you the process I went through and the options I presented for that in the next lesson. 6. Stationary Design: You may have thought at the end of a previous lesson, that was the finish line. We've locked in the different elements of a brand identity. Job done well, not always. Often you've actually got to get a client started by producing the first physical, tangible items, the first pieces of collateral for the brand. Now as you're going to see in this lesson, although we've made certain decisions, lock certain elements in, there are lots of different ways you could actually use and implement those elements. I like to include stationery. If there's some kind of brochure or marketing material the client needs, I'd like to get involved with that as part of a project scope because it just starts from off with a good example to follow the right way to implement the identity that you're presenting them. And even if you produce quite detailed brand guidelines, which I'll show you in a future lesson, the client could still go a little off course. Good to give them a strong starting point to work with. We'll begin with some letterhead options I give to the client. Maybe this doesn't feel particularly exciting, but it's quite important. Large company is going to be sending out lots and lots of different communication on headed paper. And this is really a symbol of a brand many of their clients are going to interact with. This is one option I produced, it's quite minimal. You've got the logo at the top, a little gold key line, and then contact details underneath another option with almost a faded watermark of the brand mark at the top, which is quite effective from the contact details at the bottom. There was just a little subtle hint of green along the bottom there. In this version we've got a bigger band of that green to really show that off at the top. And then a little touch of that green accent color at the bottom. Contact details, I don't usually provide this many options, but the client wanted to see quite a range here. I'll give them a scattershot approach and then zero in on what appealed to them. Wouldn't usually recommend giving as many options as this. This was another nice one. You've got green top and bottom, that faded brand mark. That's a nice touch. I often include if there is some brand mark or symbol. As long as it's faint enough, it won't interfere with what's printed on top of this letter headed paper. I think quite a nice touch where you can include that. This was a more simple one. We did include a charcoal black as a brand color. This doesn't actually use the green, which I think would be a mistake, but I think they wanted to see that as an option. Then another version here. Each time you can see I'm giving different variations of alignment, logo and contact details left aligned. There was a little offset there, can't remember the reason for that. Sometimes they'll give you details. If they're using some business management software or accounting software, they might actually give you specific measurements and requirements for the letterhead might say, you've got a certain amount of space you need to work within for the header or for the footer, for the margins. All of that sometimes factors into this. I'll jump ahead to the version they chose, which was this one. I think a little combination actually of the other options that quite striking faded brand mark at the top, a little subtle hint of that green as a border along the bottom. And then you've got the logo and contact details. I hadn't yet actually put in the final contact details. We've got their address and company number, but the website and domain name was actually pending. It's fine to do that sometimes, especially if you're working with either a start up or a company that's about to launch a new website, you might need to use placeholder copy for some of those details. You can still produce it to them. You can still get them to sign off on the design. Come back to you when they need to pop those details in. Next we'll take a little look at the business cards. A few options for the front cover on the first three pages. A version on the charcoal black, a version on the green, and then a version on whites, and then the pages to follow. Again, I don't usually give this many options, but it was such a large team and they wanted to see. I got the sense by this point in the project, they enjoyed being given options. They didn't want me to just show them one, for I felt worked, try to accommodate the preferences of a client, in this case. Some layer options here. It probably looks a little strange if you're looking at this on a big screen. Obviously a business card is tiny, fits within your hand. The text is looking humongous in some places here. A few options here. Contact details on the back. These I think are a little better balanced. The idea was to follow on these earlier pages. This one, I think really doesn't work. I'm not sure how that snuck in there. Thank goodness the client didn't choose that. You can imagine just super large name really clashes with a logo just above it. Good. But later on where the name isn't quite as huge and you've got some different layout options going, these are much better, a huge range of examples I included here. But they assured me if I showed them lots of options, they would pick one and then that was it, we would go with it. And you can see here the final version they chose, which I think was very nice white background for the logo on the front. Then on the reverse, you've got both a brand mark, that unique green color that we'd come up with that we were quite proud of. And the nice balanced text. If there's a lesson here, I guess it would be when I look through the business card options I provided. Although the client asked to see lots of different options, some of these were quite weak. Some of the options I showed here, I look at them now and I think this really shouldn't have passed quality control in terms of a contrast in letter size was just not appropriate for a business card. I cringe looking at some of these that's snuck through now. Thank goodness for client chose a nice well balanced option. But maybe a lesson there is take a little more time to vet your own work. Don't share too many options and make sure every option you share you're proud of and you'd be happy looking back on it years in the future as thankfully I am now another little tip. Although you might share some options with your client, try to advise them in terms of mixing and matching. If they were to lay all the collaterally created out on one table, you want there to be similarities. Consistency, although there are different ways to implement the brand identity, you want it to all look as harmonious as possible. If, for example they chose an option that featured the charcoal background color for the business card, I would then advise that that's present in the letterhead instead on both the business card and the letterhead and other items we went on to design, We're using the same elements in a very similar way. That's another key tip that wraps up for the stationary design. Next we'll look at the brand guidelines I produced for this client and what I like to include in that document. 7. The Snowball Effect: In the previous lesson, I mentioned the snowball effect. What is the snowball effect? What am I talking about? Well, it's this momentum that you need to build up as a freelance designer or as a small private studio. It means when a project finishes with one client, you don't want it to actually finish to end there, you want repeat business from that client. Ideally, you want to get referrals and recommendations, so that's all going to come down to how your relationship, how the project went, how happy the client is with the work you've produced, but also some opportunities you might take to just go the extra mile with the client. To really leave them with a good taste in their mouth and a good experience working with you. So one way of doing that, I'll share with you now for the luxury property show I mentioned in the previous video, I like to create brand style sheets to show the brand identity in all its glory. I did that for the luxury property show as well. You're taking the elements you've produced in the brand suite, but you're putting together mock ups showing what a book might look like here in a little presentation case. You're using doc imagery. It's really something to explore the potential of a brand identity if it's used as you intend. The way that tone, that look and feel nails the objectives you set out to complete at the outset of a project. I love creating these brand style sheets. Now I think it's such a nice way to finish the project. If you share these with your client quite often they'll be blown away by it. They'll think, wow, this has really exceeded our expectations. So these are some some mocked up pages I put together for the luxury property show. They went down very well, both with my client and also on Pinterest, which I think I alluded to earlier. I pin all of my work. I kind of each day, I'll start for the day and I'll just spend 30 seconds and I'll pin something from my portfolio. Make sure it's got a few tag line keywords, a few tags, And that's it. Just put it out there on Pinterest. But I've gained some real momentum with that. This project for the luxury property show, it has been one of the most popular that I've posted on Pinterest. That's part of the snowball effect as well. When the project finishes, where do you share the work? Do you make sure examples are visible? Are you putting them out there on social media? I spend hardly any time on social media anymore. I spend almost no time engaging with anyone. I just have a little workflow. And especially when I'm busy, it's just a case of a project finishes and I'm getting as much usage from creating these brand style sheets, presenting the work beautifully as I can. A lot of time goes into this presentation, and then I'm just firing out on Instagram. I'm firing out on Pinterest. And in some cases, that picks up momentum and you get a lot of good Come back to you from that. That was certainly the case with this project. I finish the identity, everyone's happy. I send across, I won't show you this because I think it's obvious. But I send across logo files, I'll send across any unique elements I've created, different formats, EPS, Jpeg, PNG. You can find more details if you look at some of my other courses on some recommendations I make there when it comes to outputting that final brand suite. But that goes across to the guidelines, go across, everybody's happy before long. I think just a few weeks later, I got a phone call and they were looking to create a website. Wanted to ask if I could get involved with that. Now a little tip I want to share. If you're maybe not a web designer yourself or you do web design, but you have a fairly limited scope. You can create something that's beautiful, that's functional, but you don't touch advanced functionality. You wouldn't create a site that needs to have like a login portal. If that's the case, there's something to be said for doing front end web design. So what's front end web design? Well, it's where you're only responsible for the front end look and feel you create. It could be a PDF or Jpeg mock ups. I'll show you an example. It's best to talk you through this. This is what I did with the luxury property show. Here we are. And I'll zoom in a little, just so you can see that nice and clearly, Literally, this is beyond wire framing. You're really fleshing it out. And if you zoom in as you scroll down through, this actually looks like you're browsing a live website. But this takes no knowledge of coding. You don't have to have any technical ability to do this. You just need to understand how websites need to flow and function. But you've designed the look and feel, all the little elements, the font choices, the key lines, everything. But once you're finished, you actually hand this over to developer and they build it. They bring it to life. I do both. I actually develop websites myself, but the luxury had their own in house team of developers. When they approached me and said, could you help with a website? Would you be interested in doing just a front end design? I thought that's perfect, I get to do the bit I love. I charge very fairly for that. But then it goes over and the development is left to them. I'll show you some of the mockups I created. This was a simple one for each blog post. This one here, this is really where you get to see that brand identity. We've spent all that time carefully crafting, this is where it really lives and breathes. These days, I think you really see it come to life in a website. Let's see, I think this is the articles page. Some options to sort by category. Again, you don't have to actually understand how that's going to happen technically. You create the buttons, create the look and feel. The developers take care of doing that for you. If you've never worked on a front end web design project, look into that. You'll need to build up a little bit of knowledge about user interface design. You don't want to do a bad job of that, but what I'm saying is it's much easier to learn those front end basics and be able to design the look and feel and then you pass that on and the developer does the heavy lifting. I did this for them, There was another page here. I think this was something they wanted to enable them to list their exhibition stance. Which exhibitors would have which stands at the show. You'd be able to log in and have a look at the exhibitor list, a page here for profiles speakers that would be attending the show I mocked up. Here you can see I've drawn a little arrow and essentially said, once you click this, what should display? What should pop out to the side page Here we can actually complete a form to submit an inquiry for a ticket for the show. Last but certainly not least, the landing page, which as you can see, when it's zoomed out to fit the whole thing in is huge. If you're someone that wants to charge by page, not all pages are equal. I recommend charging by the amount of content you're working with. You can get called out otherwise, but this is it information on the tickets, packages, prices, exhibits an example of properties at the show. You can see if you compare or jump across to the live website in a moment. The developer and the team that took this over, they didn't actually implement all of these ideas, but most of them are in place. You can see they've done quite a nice job implementing this. Quite satisfying to see your identity work in a form that you're really seeing those elements come to life. You're seeing the colors, the fonts you've chosen create a rich look and feel and an experience for visitors and for your client's customers. Does the snowball effect work well? Yes, it does. From working with a parent company, designing different items of collateral, to being introduced to the luxury property show, doing their identity project, then doing a good job with that, getting introduced to their developers, doing front end web design for them, and then actually a number of other items that were needed in future. So this is what you want to happen. You want to keep building momentum. Keep doing your best work for each client, for each project. And organically, you'll find that one good thing often leads to another. That's the best kind of marketing you could possibly have. Once you get these initial opportunities, these introductions to brands and you begin working with them, look after them, and more often than not, they'll continue to look after you. 8. Conclusion: Thanks for watching. I really hope you've enjoyed this. What did I call it? Design, ride along. I hope it has felt a bit like you're here in the studio with me getting behind the scenes, look at a project from start to finish and all the little nuances and the bits that you wouldn't know about in between if you were to just look at my portfolio and the finished projects online. If you're considering a career in graphic design, particularly brand identity design, I hope this has been a useful virtual work. Experience has shown you what it looks like, the kind of skills you might need to build and develop to take a project from beginning to end. Sometimes you don't always get that. Just looking at someone's social profile or the kind of highlights they present to you. I hope this was a realistic look at what the profession really involves. Or of course, if you're a fellow designer, then perhaps like me, you just enjoy looking at what other designers are doing. And it's great to do that. I'm sure I've done it to many of you. I've taken a little sneak peek at your processes and techniques. And I think there's always a lot we can learn from each other. And I hope you've gained something valuable. Maybe a little tip or trick, or some insight, but you can use to streamline and to improve what you do. So if you've enjoyed this class, please be sure to check out my profile. There's lots of other classes I've produced to help you with many different things. From building a strong portfolio to streamlining your workflow and lots of other useful content. So please be sure to check that out if you haven't already. And lastly, please remember to leave a review and follow my profile if you enjoyed the class. So that hopefully I can see you in the next one.