Transcript

00:00 There are five important stages that every designer must go through in order to create a complete brand identity. Now I could sit here and tell you what those things are or. We could create a brand from scratch and discover firsthand what they are and why they're so important that sounds way more fun doesn't it. So. Let's do that so the brand we will be designing for is a neat business called whippy and the first stage of the brand. Identity design process is research and competitor analysis as the lead designer on the project. It's my responsibility to figure out a direction for the brand that will help the business stand out against its competitors and the first thing. I like to do during this stage is mind. Map I use it as a way to empty my mind and get all of my existing ideas out leaving room for more ideas. Once I've done some research okay so whilst doing this I came up with the tagline eyes on the pies a play on the saying eyes on the prize. This could potentially be used within the design in some sort of way and I know it might sound a little bit random a little bit silly. But this is what the stage is all about don't judge yourself and just put all of your ideas down no matter how random they may seem because Initial Ideas can help spark new ideas.

01:17 Now. It's time to gather some inspiration from external sources and my go-to for. This is always Pinterest 30 minutes later and I've compiled my inspiration into a Pinterest board. So I can easily access the images now you'll see there's a handful of different design Styles in the board and this will need to be refined to avoid the design Direction being too broad and that's what we're going to do next. So now we're in Adobe Illustrator and it is time to take all of our research and filter it in to a mood board. Just a little note here that if I was doing this for a real client I would create two mood boards with their read Styles and then send this over to them for more information about. This can be found in this video so there's three things to consider to ensure we're doing the stage correctly so firstly make sure to include. Relevant photography do not include anything that isn't industry specific because it's going to be confusing to the client and it's going to mess up the vision that we want for this mood board.Obviously I'm going to be using a prize here because this is a meat pie business now secondly stick to a clear typography style. So it's obvious when designing The Branding. So if you include anything more than four or five different logos or different fonts. It's not going to be a refined design Direction and also going to be very hard for the client to understand. What font is going to be used when you actually start designing The Branding and thirdly make sure you show a rough color palette which could be shown in the images and also a color palette on the mood board as well. This just helps the client understand whether it's going to be a bold and bright bubbly kind of brand or if it's going to be more of a minimal and toned down kind of brand so actually putting time into researching and ensuring that you have clearly identified a brand entity. Direction during this stage makes it a whole lot easier when it actually comes to designing the logo and The Branding entity because you have Clarity the client has signed it off.

03:11 You know exactly what direction you're going in so if you skip this stage you're essentially going into the project blind which normally leads to a lack of ideas down the line. Now the direction has been finalized which I'm really excited about I'm going to Source. Some fonts which I'll get from embata elements the sponsor of today's video. They have over 40 000 fonts to browse through so finding something that matches our creative direction should be fairly easy so for each project. I usually download between four to eight different fonts that match the style on the mood board and then once I'm happy with the selection. I will list these out and then it's on to the elimination process. So here's the six fonts that I've chosen and whittled down. Now. They all hold the characteristics and playfulness that I am looking for but something that has really grabbed.

03:57 My attention is the two o's. On this one they kind of remind me of two sneaky little eyes which link nicely back to the idea I had during that mind mapping stage at the start. So I'm making the executive decision and we're choosing that one. This next stage of our creative process for Designing. This brand is where us designers earn our money so first I'm going to turn the selective bun into an outline by pressing command shift and O and then I'm grouping the word to prepare me for the next stage. Now the first thing I'm looking for is the letters that I can adjust to create something memorable within this logo. Now the two o's are what initially captured my attention. So I'm going to make these look even more like eyes and pretty obvious you know what they are and I'm going to be using the Eraser and pencil tool two great tools for customizing typography. So I'm just using eraser tool and I am erasing a part of this oh so so. Then I can then go in with the pencil tool. I'm just pressing n as the shortcut and just drawing over the original o to create kind of like an eyeball within that negative space. I'm just gonna just adjust this slightly to get it perfect and then I think what I'm going to do is actually just erase the other o so I'm just gonna press. The backspace get rid of that and then drag this over.

05:12 So now we have two eyes keeping the eyes on the pies next up I'm looking for letters that look in balance or out of place and straight away. The W kind of just looks a little disjointed to this word. A feeling that we don't want to create now this is because it doesn't actually join up with the rest of the letters. So I'm going to actually change that this time I'm going to be using the pencil tool but in a different way compared to the last so. I'm just using the pencil tool to adjust the direction of the top part of the W and the H which then makes it easier for me to customize and get it to that position that I want it to so. I'm actually going to use a stroke path to connect these two letters.Together. I kind of want it to resemble that feeling of the word when you say well hey you're excited and happy so it kind of captures two hands connecting and embracing that feeling that's how I want it to look anyway. Let's see if we can actually get that to look like how I want it in my head. So I'm just adjusting the path. That is already there we're just adjusting the H because it's kind of sitting a little bit funny at the Top. If I increase that stroke um and I think what's missing I need to increase it even more so that the hole in the W there just disappears so it actually resembles the hands combining throwing Fists in the air saying whippy and I think we've actually hit that feeling pretty well just by adding the um connection there with that stroke path and connecting the W and H together which I think was kind of missing. So I think there's one last thing that I want to customize and give part of this word power.

06:41 So obviously Pi isn't pronounced within this word. But you can visually see it. So I want to make this more noticeable and don't and so I'm going to grab the pencil tool and I'm just going to start underlining part of this word. I don't think I like that kind of flick round. It's too kind of similar to the W and H so if we grab the tool that kind of works a bit better. I'm just using the bottom part of the p and we're just drawing a curved line. This could take a few attempts until we get it right. I think that one sits nicely we'll just drag that down a little bit. So it sits nicely at the bottom I think that works.It draws your eyes perfectly to the word pie without it being too over the top. So after customizing the font there is now an issue with the logo type and that is it's not responsive. We're going to tackle that problem now as we move on to our next stage of the creative process. So I think I'm going to create an icon kind of like a mascot for this pie business. Now the aim is to include elements from the logo type to keep the logo. Suite nice and consistent so we're going to start with the base of our pie and I'm grabbing the pen tool just clicking down. And I think I'm going to create half of this base and we're actually going to right click click on here and reflect this. So the bottom of the pie base is very nice and symmetrical now. I think what I'm going to do is actually grab. The pencil tool and I'm going to create a another base but make this a little bit more fun add some more personality into it and kind of make the line connect with the original logo type and that underline in the pie. So we've got our two bases now and they're looking really nice I'm going to grab the two eyes from our original logo type. Bring this down. I actually need to increase the stroke of the base because it's not consistent with the logo type and the thickness of the eyes so placing this in here.

08:26 And I think what I want to do is actually kind of create like a mask or body out of this. So the next thing I need to do is actually add the top of the pie which can represent the hair and the head of our pie body. So I am using a pencil tool and I'm creating some really nice curves and connecting these lines together and hopefully. We can create some really nice icon ones. Now something you need to remember when doing the stage is to keep pushing the concept so I'm probably going to go ahead and create 10 different pie icons and even if I think I've landed on one I'm going to just create keep creating variations until we have a ton so after bending several hours on coming up with different icons drawing them out that just felt like there was a disconnect within this icon.The top part of the pie the bottom part of the pie and the eyes they just felt like three separate things and they just it just wasn't working. So I think I've come up with a solution so what I went ahead and did is. I have connected the top part with the eyes so they connect nicely with one another. This also touches the base of the pie so now it feels like it is one whole icon and I also added in a little Arch eyebrow and I think this works nicely because we're going to have the tagline keep your eyes on the pies and the eyebrow is kind of like arching. So it's kind of sneakily keeping the eyes on the pies and I think that just adds in some personality. It makes it really unique to the brand and I think we're on to a winner so something you may have picked up on and noticed throughout this process.

09:55 So far is that I've been designing in black and white now. The reason for this being is that color can be so distracting to the eye and also leads to non-legible designs. So I like to to include choosing a color palette staged within our process and that's what we're moving on to right. Now remember that movie board stage that we did at the very start well. It now comes in super handy because a color palette was picked strategically when doing research and it now means we can get into exploring these colors even more so here. I'll create tons of different color palettes that have slightly different tones and the best tip I can give here when doing. This is to test your logos with the chosen color palette to ensure that everything just works perfectly together. Now. This means trying different tones adding in additional colors that could potentially work and always keep the businesses competitors in mind when doing this to ensure you're creating something that isn't too similar and is unique to the business. So now we move on to the final stage and this is where you can really sell the brand concept. You've created for the client. Businesses want to see how their branding will look on products.Flyers social media posts and more they want to see how it will look in real life not just on a computer screen. So something I always like to do is put together a couple of mock-ups to show the brand in action in real life scenarios and for whoopee. I really need you to think about where The Branding is going to be used. The most and it being a product based business. Packaging is going to play the most important part along with their social media presence so I'm creating the packaging design in Adobe Illustrator ready to put on the Photoshop mocker. Now this stage also helps me correctly see if the branding I've created is actually going to work on other assets because if it doesn't fit it's back to the drawing board so an hour later I have put together some mock-ups. Let's take a look I am keeping my eyes on the pies. Especially this mock-up. It looks so good and it does such a great job of just showing the brand in action. We can clearly see how the color palette works together how the fonts align with one another how the logo is being used and just the assets tied nicely into one another. So this not only gives me confirmation as a designer that The Branding is going to work but it also gives confirmation to the client.They can clearly see a vision and they can clearly see how their branding is going to be used. And that is why I love using mock-ups. So we've got our beautiful pie mock-up. I then went ahead and did a little phone mock-up so we could see how their advertising could look on social media if they were to run Facebook ads if they were to run Instagram ads. This is how they kind of brand identity would be used showing some imagery showing how the typography would be used and I just think the colors that have been chosen work so well for a pie business. Now yes more cups are important. But one of the most important stages done within this process is customizing typography and if you want to get better at it then you need to watch this video right here where I go in depth about all the tools I use when customizing typography and creating standout brands.