Branding and Corporate Image

The live brief for this module was to design a logo and stationary set (including a letterhead, business card and compliment slip) for Newcastle College School of Creative Industries.

Because this section of the school was for the 'creatives', I knew I wanted to design something bright and eye-catching. After my initial research, I decided to go for a 'splat' look with a watercolour effect. I felt like the watercolour effect on the logo softened the splat look. I chose shades of orange because it's bright and eye-catching ad associated with happiness. This is my end result:

Edinburgh

This week we had a day trip to Edinburgh to visit some design agencies: New Haven, Leith Agency and Story. I really enjoyed the day, proper school trip vibes! I'd never visited an agency prior to this and it was great to get an insight into a live working studio, overall very inspirational!

First up was New Haven advertising agency. They had an amazing studio, light and airy with props from their adverts dotted about the place and a chill out area with bean bags and 'table football'. First impressions: this would be a really cool place to work based solely on the studio itself. Their latest interns gave us a short talk on their experience's and how they got to work for New Haven and answered our questions.

Next was The Leith Agency. They took our group to their board room for a presentation on the company, which was actually a boat moored at Leith Harbour! I thought this was a really quirky idea and the boat was spacious and modern. They said they chose the boat so that they could get away from 'the office' from time to time, a great way to clear your head. They showed us their latest campaign for Iron Bru which were humorous and appealing.

Lastly was Story, who's approach to design is, "Find the simple truth and give it legs. Ideas with legs can run anywhere." We had a talk from their latest intern and were then given a mini brief: we had to create an advertisement strategy for a brand new midge spray. This was a brand new experience and gave us a chance to work alongside the advertising students and their expertise! Each group came up with really good ideas and the overall session was good fun. 

Lecture by Colin Davies

Today, Colin Davies, Creative Director of OneNineFour design studio, came into the college to give FdA Graphic Design students a talk on his career experiences and the industry...

Colin Davies is a self taught graphic designer with no design related qualifications; Colin told us he built up his skills by reading books and magazines, attending studio visits and lectures and most importantly, practice, practice, practice! He built up his own design studio (based in Newcastle) and has worked with the likes of Go North East, Newcastle University, Gateshead Council and the NHS.

Colin gave us his 10 lessons in life:

1.      Trust your instinct
2.      Develop your own identity
3.      Make yourself appear bigger than you are
4.      Get everything in writing
5.      Have a solid idea
6.      If you don’t think you can do it, do it anyways!
7.      Get it proof read
8.      If there’s a problem, talk about it
9.      Be a nice person and people will remember you
10.  Develop your own intellectual property

A particular piece of work that he showed us really stood out to me, which was design work for Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service. OneNineFour created a recruitment campaign, influenced by TWFRS ethos who employ 1253 people in the North East, each employee playing a valuable part of the team. To reflect this, OneNineFour created an illustration featuring 1253 items, one for every single person:

I love the boldness of the red to represent the Fire & Rescue service and the simplistic illustrations are appealing and compact, fitting together like a jigsaw. The overall recruitment pack is neat and eye-catching, a great promotional set.

Branding and Corporate Image - Mini Brief

We were given our first live mini brief for this module; we were asked to design and create a logo for the 'Newcastle Music Hub'.

The Newcastle Music Hub is a brand new scheme to encourage musical talent within the local area; making sure that every child has access to high quality music education.

I decided to create two completely different logos on different ends of the spectrum. For my first logo, I played on the name of the company and explored the different avenues of the word hub. My initial ideas were to create a circular logo with a centre focus point but still keep an element of music. This is what I came up with:

I chose the bold, playful font to appeal to my target audience of children and chose a bright, happy colour. Instead of a block colour, I went for a gradient tone, light orange to dark orange, as I felt this added a depth to the logo.

For my second logo, I wanted to create something more crisp and contemporary. I decided to create something with lot's of straight lines and angles for a more modern take. This is my second logo design:

 I decided to keep the music note within the design so that my target audience would associate the logo visually with music and not just from the word 'music'. I chose the font Bebas Neue as I felt it back the clean, modern look I was aiming for. Whilst producing the logo, I played around with the tracking and kerning until each word was aligned within the box. 'Hub' was a difficult word to space out without it looking ridiculous, so I added the circles to break it down a little.

Branded Alphabet

As part of my first module; Branding and Corporate Image; I was required to create a 'branded alphabet'. I opted for a wide variety of brands so that my finished piece would appeal to a larger audience. See if you can guess the logo's: