Name
William Leung

Location
Sacramento, California

Personal Background
Currently, I am a Graphic Design major at Sacramento State. I will be graduating in the spring and hope to open my own studio afterwards. I am also a Freelance Graphic Designer and Photographer. What got me into design (primarily print) was actually having my own clothing line. I designed and screenprinted shirts with 2 friends out of high school. It was an amazing learning experience but it reached a point where I realized I needed to learn more. That is when I pursued Design as a career. I went to a city college, took some classes and got my A.S. in Graphic Communication. Then I transferred and got into the design program at CSUS. I worked as an Editorial Designer and Asst. Art Director at a local alt weekly, but I knew I wanted to be more creative. This SkillShare class has motivated me to find a new creative venture outside of school and hopefully get me closer to where I want to be. I am a total design nerd and this brand is something I have always wanted to do.

BRAND NAME
Visual Surplus & Supplies

Slogan/Mission Statement
Supplying the World's Creatives

Vision
Create things that other creatives need.
Inspire and motivate others through actions and example.
Practice strong design fundamentals: shapes, line, point, color, composition and type.
Be a platform for design collaborations.

Values
Design | Community | Collaboration | Inspiration

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 1 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 2 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 3 - student project

Name Process
I began this class really focused on the design process. My goal was to start a company that really catered to designers. By creating my mission, vision and values, I was able to pull words and characteristics that I felt represented the branded I wanted. From there, I worked on mindmapping and abstracted the general idea to get a more creative name. Then I refined my list to favorites and made sure that the name still represented the mission. That elemented the "cool names" that are names for the sake of it sounding cool.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 4 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 5 - student project

Logomark Process
7/31 - I have been breaking down the words and meaning of my brand name. I do a lot of mindmapping for my class assignments so it really helps me come up with more abstract and unique ideas for a logomark. I will start sketching ideas as well as work on some type specimens for a logotype soon. More things to come

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 6 - student project

8/3 - RESEARCH: After mindmapping, I came up with some key words for creative direction of the logo: pattern, worldwide, passport, seals, rations, old military design, military food packaging, industrialization, blue collar, warehouse, overflow. Below is some research of the inspirations that I got my creative direction from. I really wanted to get across an oldschool, thick line logo feel inspired by Aaron Draplin, Paul Rand and State Park logos. However, I am also torn with maybe having it roughened and more like Jon Contino and Young Jerks.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 7 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 8 - student project

8/5 - I went with the idea of globe (worldwide) as the concept of surplus, supplies, generic, standard and warehouse feel. However, I still wanted to incorporate some sort of design element to represent the VISUAL side of the brand. Visual in design means contrast so I had the idea of a half black half stroke globe. These are my initial sketches. I wanted to make sure to stay away from the pattern (which is also a visual element) of logos such as Panam, ATT, IBM etc.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 9 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 10 - student project

8/6-8/7 I worked on some digital comps the last few days. I am getting to a point where I like it and I think its getting there. I am find the inverted globe to be a challenge because the shapes of the negative/positive space don't match up. Overall, it is 90% there. I just need to fine tune the type, clean up the shapes and possible work on distressing it ... or just have a clean vector.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 11 - student project

Updated 8/7
I have dialed it down to the large V logo for the mark. Scaled down to 1inch, the more detailed globe with "VS&S" don't hold up. The type becomes too small and not legible. The screen colors on the logo are horrible. I was basically playing with tones of gray to see the effect on the globes color and also the pattern of the globes stroke. I think I am going to roughen it up a bit and then call it final. Color seems a little more tricky. I still want to keep the surplus factory feel so it is important the color represents that mood. Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 12 - student project

The tones aren't exactly correct since it is RGB but there is a slight tint of cream as the fill in the globe. The strokes are pretty close, just a tad darker and the grey should be neutral and less red in tone.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 13 - student project

Logotype Process

8/3-8/5 I have also been working on the logotype at the same time. Going off the same creative direction, I have been trying different compositions of the name. Since it is a semi-long brand name, I decided to stack the type and play with the options from that. Here are some inspirations and sketches.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 14 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 15 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 16 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 17 - student project

So far I have only had time to mock up one digital comp that I liked. I seems that the type solution will work on anything but once down to 1 inch, the small type is all gone. I tried mixing up the colors to see how 2 color looks as well as the globe without the "V". Too early to decide which one I like. I will have to mock up the other sketches to see what looks good tomorrow. Also, yes I Gotham. It is played out but it works perfect for the creative direction I want. It is standard and industrial and easy to work with.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 18 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 19 - student project

8/8 So I played around with the composition and some other typefaces today. Nothing really hit the nail for me. I wanted to try to typefaces instead of just gotham and but nothing seemed to work. The faces were either not wide enough or bold enough or tall and condensed enough. In the end, I think K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) gets the job done. Plus a logo has less room for error with just one font.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 20 - student project

Refined logo. Final version, just trying to nail down color options and how the color effects the hierachy of the logotype.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 21 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 22 - student project

BRAND STYLE GUIDE

8/10 Been working on the style guide today. Havent finished all the requirements in Unit 2 yet. I spent most of my time refining the logotype and mark. While building the style guide, I saw small increment and sizing issues. I also refined some tones in the color of the logos as well. I pulled more yellow into the globe to complement the darker navy in the text. Surprisingly, the design of the logo almost matched up to double or thirds or another element. So small adjustments got them to be all sized to the same ratio. Visually the rations of sizing help it look more locked in as one piece.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 23 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 24 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 25 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 26 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 27 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 28 - student project

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 29 - student project

DEMOGRAPHICS
8/17 Did a quick write up of the demographics. This isn't too specific but I might want to narrow it down more the closer I get to actually creating the company.

Visual Surplus & Supplies - image 30 - student project

William Leung

Freelance Graphic Designer & Photographer

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