The Problem
To begin with I was important for us to understand and address who this website was for and what problems it had to solve. Through the presentation of this problem, it was clear we had to begin with User/Job Stories. These were vital in helping me decide what information to display and how to display it.
User stories are something I've only recently started doing, but I’ve found this an invaluable process.
Sketching
I find sketching to be an important part of coming up with ideas. I found this especially true with logo design and brand design as it allows you to explore multiple aspects of an idea. I found it quite hard to come up with ideas that I liked and thought worked well as a simplistic design.
Sketching helps me put ideas on the page in a quick and efficient manner.
Digital Sketching
Digital sketching is one of my favorite parts of the process as it allows me to get a grasp of one of the final products without having to spend too much time polishing it and refining it.
Colours
Picking a colour palette is another part of creating a brand identity that I had to think of, throughout my logo design I had used black and white and I am a big fan of keeping colours to a minimal and having high contrast. So, in keeping with this I stayed with black and white, but also added a slight of white and gray.
My original colour choice for my brand was a blue and yellow, which a pushed away from when I decided the logo it was associated with didn't match who I was.
Font
The font is an important part of a brand so I spent a lot of time searching for fonts that I enjoy. I knew from the offset that I wanted a monospace font similar to the one that is used when coding and then a complimentary serif font. I ended up settling on
Castoro as a primary font and
Inconsolata as a secondary font.
Overall Brand
As part of the task set we had to display our brand guidelines and work on slides/ cards that can be easily presented. For this I displayed all my work on cards withy the idea that they could be printed and kept as a small collection that could be referred to when needed.
Conclusion
I enjoyed working on this project and secretly revisited it multiple times to revise aspects of my brand guidelines as I worked out who I was as a designer. I am happy with the logo and fonts that I developed and have used them in previous portfolio websites.
I do however think that this is a project worth revisiting as I have learnt more and seen more since the completion of this that would change how I approached the task. This definitely could do with an overhaul to match my brand now.
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