BRAND DEVELOPMENT
GUIDE
Part of the completion of the CalArts Graphic Design Specialization course through Coursera was a capstone project. This project revolved around a brand development guide which then utilized the skills and concepts we had developed through the 5 courses.
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We were tasked with creating the concept, history, tag line, logo, research and concept mapping, and various other brand components to create a cohesive guide booklet.
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I came up with an idea (one that I've genuinely considered for myself) about a historical cookie bakery for the modern day person and centered my concept around both old school and new school visuals.
DESIGNER/COPYWRITER/CONTENT CREATOR JULY 2022 MORE ON ISSUU
IDEA
The idea behind the brand was a historical recipe based cookie bakery that incorporates a modern way of life. In other words, using history and applying modern ideas: food allergies, marketing, and health awareness to the baking.
OBJECTIVES
The project incorporates many of the main concepts behind Graphic Design and applies them in a "real world" type of setting. We were tasked with creating a believable backstory in order to help build upon the research, design concepts: logo, color, typeface, imagery, and complete a fully brand development guide.
OBSTACLES
What became immediately clear was that my concept of both historic and modern was going to be a tricky one. The audience for both aesthetics are vastly different and usually do not intermix. It had to come together in a modern graphic way while still harkening back to historical concepts in a more Victorian age.
THE RESEARCH
The research process began with the back story then with creating the name: Past Bytes. There was a map of words and phrases which were then narrowed down and mixed about to create the end name.
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From there, we could move onto the visual research and construction of the brand. I pulled images from both historical sources (publications, drawings, etc) and from clip art that had a more historical feel. I did the same with the contemporary sources, knowing that I would need to find a way to marry both of these image collages into one cohesive brand concept.
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Using the images, I was able to find a through story behind colors, shapes, and even a font duo that encompasses both the serif of a Victorian feel and a sans serf that speaks to modern sensibilities.
THE GRAPHIC &
MARKETING DESIGN
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For this project, I decided to utilize Canva since I knew I would be working on it in multiple locations and multiple devices; not all who supported Adobe Creative Suite. This allowed easy upload of images and videos from my phone or other quick snaps of research I found in day-to-day moments.
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It is a bit trickier on the free version of Canva to organize your book layout if you do not put the work in first, but it exports quickly and compresses easily for the project and web apps that I needed to use.
I began my graphic design journey by playing with different fonts that evoked both a historic (serif) or modern (sans serif) feel. Sans Serif does have a long historical backstory, so I was able to find a font type that straddles both.
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For the logo, I knew I wanted to incorporate a more modern idea of using a very simple icon in the shape of a cookie with the text. It's an easy call to what the company produces in a modern way but also takes into account that historically, signs outside of shops were symbols vs words.
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The colors were chosen for their warmth while calling back to kitchen tools: the orange tinge of a wooden spoon, the orange-brown of farm fresh eggs, the warm red that helps draw your eye. From there, it was about keeping things clean and bold.
CONCLUSIONS
The final capstone booklet was eye catching and modern. It visually mapped out the design process and told a story from beginning to end, giving the company a clear direction.
It was an interesting creative challenge to take each step and fully develop a guide page for it. In my work, I'm more used to delivering a working or even just a final draft of a product and not showcasing how those products came to be. I found I enjoy showing off the nit-gritty process and that applying the same polish to the unpolished process is creatively fulfilling.