OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Study Task 4 (Build a Brand)

Today we were put into groups of three to work in. I worked with Lizzy and Sam. We were given a word to work with, our word was 'fencer'. With this word we had to create our own brand. The word can be perceived in two different ways, it can relate to the fencing sport as well as someone who builds fences. I took it upon myself to write down all of our ideas as we were having our initial chat. 

All of the thought processes below are fairly self explanatory. During the time we were talking about what we were going to create and what route to go down, Lorraine came over and had a chat with us. She knew quite a lot about fences and everything we may need to consider. At this stage we had decided that we were going to focus on building fences as opposed to the sport. When Lorraine spoke to us though, it made us think differently as we don't have the time to research into it in too much depth in one day. 

This made us think differently about the brief and consider our options on a wider scale. We didn't want to just brand a company who simply builds fences, but instead wanted to create something unique and memorable, giving people a reason to choose us rather than every other fencing company out there that already exists.

We had a little think about possible straplines we could include. This was quite challenging and we came up with quite a few in conversation that were quite cheesy and not really suitable. We decided that we should think of a name for our brand before doing this. 

We discussed our potential brand ethics and talked about whether we should be a high end brand or whether we should be a family run business. This will determine our branding quite considerably. 

We then had an idea to create a brand which encompasses the idea of creating pieces for the garden which include fencing parts. We thought about how we could advertise ourselves and what products we would sell to our target audience. We decided that we should provide a range of products for our audience to choose from, depending on their situation and location.

We would be targeting people that live in the city who don't have much of a garden space. They would only have a small balcony space and so all of the products would have to be a suitable size, so that they don't take up too much room. 

When we were trying to think about possible names for our brand, we considered a wide range of possibilities. We considered gardening terms and came up with the idea of 'cultivate' which means to improve and prepare land. We all felt happy with this idea and so we decided to use it for our branding. 

I then wrote a list of everything we need to achieve by the end of the day, so that we stay on target. I wrote down everything that needs to be included in the brand guidelines. Everything that I have written down was definitely achievable. 

We then spent a good half an hour to produce some logo ideas individually. Below are all of the ideas I came up with. The colour isn't very accurate on here as it was designed in CMYK, but the general idea of it is clear. I experimented with using a leaf over the 'i' to represent gardening, and then tried placing it behind the first letter to see if this could work. I then experimented with trying to make part of the word look like a fence, but it wasn't completely obvious straight away so I wasn't sure about this. I experimented with upper and lowercase typography as well, so that I could get feedback from Sam and Lizzy before we decided on a final design.

In the time that we allocated, everyone came up with a couple of ideas, mine demonstrated above. We decided to look at some of the preferred design ideas that I had produced and then develop then further. 

Below are all of the developed logo ideas. Although we all quite liked the idea of incorporating a plant/fence into the design, it just wasn't practical and looked a bit too fussy. We wanted to produce a logo which is quite contemporary and clean. 

I then did some further research into the type of installations we would produce. Below I have found a photograph which demonstrates the installation on a balcony. This photograph is ideal as it shows what can be achieved in such a small space.

Below is all of our development and mock ups to include in our presentation explaining our brand. I designed the layout of the website which took quite a while as I wanted it to be just right. I was happy with the outcome though and I am looking forward to presenting it to everyone.