Final Project Commentary
For our final project, we were tasked with creating a brand identity either for our own personal brand or for the Communications and New Media department and come up with a publication in the form of a brand style guide. I decided to go with the former option as I felt that creating a personal brand identity would be beneficial in helping me understand myself better and aid me in my future career.
Initially, I was stumped with what I wanted my personal brand identity to entail as I was unsure what I wanted my brand identity to say about me. However, after some brainstorming, I realized that I should focus on creating a brand identity that was related to the industry that I wanted to have a career in — the aviation industry.
Background & Ideation
To provide some context for my interest in the aviation industry, I interned at Changi Airport Group for my Compulsory Internship Program, which really sparked my interest in the aviation industry. If things were to go well, I would hopefully be able to have a career in the aviation industry. Hence, I wanted my personal brand to encompass the concept and theme of aviation or flight.
When people see my brand identity, I want them to be able to instantly relate it to the airport and the associated feelings that come with being at the airport. Thus, I want my brand to stir up feelings of euphoria, freedom and endless possibilities taking flight.
Logo
The first step in coming up with a brand identity would be to create a logo, as it is the foundation upon which the entire brand is built on. I believe that the essence of a brand’s values and qualities should be encapsulated within a logo as it is likely to be one of the first interactions people would have with my brand and it’s the best opportunity to make a solid first impression.
As I want my brand to be associated with wisdom and flight, I decided to use an abstracted owl in my logo. I felt that the owl is a perfect symbol for my personal brand as owls are known to be wise creatures and are also a bird species capable of flight.
My initial idea was to create a logo which consisted of only an owl, as I was inspired by the owl logo of the Australian accessories brand — Bellroy. However, after receiving feedback from my tutorial mates, I realized that people might be confused as to what my brand identity was about. Using just an owl might lead some people to associate the logo with the bird park perhaps.
Subsequently, I made improvements to my first design to create another design: to incorporate my name together with the owl to create an instantly recognizable silhouette.
The logotype is my name written in the typeface, Singapore Sling. The owl logo was created in illustrator where I used the pen tool and applied what I learnt in assignment 1 to abstract a suitable image of an owl in flight that I found online.
As seen from the picture below, my logo consists of 2 components which are the logomark and the logotype. My logo also consists of two of my brand colors, because I want to reinforce the association between the colors and my brand.
Typography
Through the use of typography, I hope to conjure up the feelings of being at the airport.
For the main titles and headings in my brand style guide and resume, I used the typeface “F25 bank printer” as I felt that it looked very similar to the typeface used in airplane boarding tickets and the old Solari board at Terminal 2 where people would check their flight timings at. As for the copy text, I used the typeface “Proxima Nova” as I felt that it had the best readability on screens, as the sans serif typeface gives it a clean and elegant look.
Color Palette
I chose a color palette that matches the myriad of colors that can be found in the morning sky, and at the same time reflected the facets of my brand that I wanted to showcase.
The medium dark shade of brown is an earthy tone, which represents the importance of always remaining down-to-earth. The orange is reminiscent of the sun, which represent the brand’s goal of having prospects that are bright like the sun. The bright color also serves to provide contrast and a pop of color to the overall palette. Dark blue is meant to represent the color of the pre-dawn sky, which shows that the brand is hard-working, starting work before dawn.
Business Card
For my name card, I took inspiration from airplane boarding tickets as I wanted to share my contact information in a creative way that allows the recipients to know what industry I come from. To do so, I searched for images of boarding tickets online and used Illustrator to create a vector design based on my own style. As for the front of my name card, I decided to keep it simple and place my logo with an eye-catching yellow block at the side.
Initially, part of my name was within the orange rectangle at the side. However, I received feedback from my tutorial mate regarding the back of my business card. She mentioned that having white text against an orange background would make it difficult to read the text. Hence, I decided to shift my name to the dark blue portion which provided more contrast, thereby making it easier to read. I also received a suggestion to swap the word “passenger” with the department that I will be working in. The aforementioned improvements can be seen below.
The Resume
Research and past experience have taught me that it is best for resumes to be kept simple and let your skills ‘do the talking’. However, I still wanted to make my resume look unique and stand out from other resumes. Thus, I decided to make my resume minimalistic but still remain visually appealing and exciting. Incorporating what I learnt from the previous assignment on information design, I played around with space and the use of icons to visually highlight certain information. For instance, I used feathers to display the level of proficiency in the skills that I have, with the maximum rating being 5 feathers.
After showing my resume to the class during the forum critique session, I received some comments regarding the portion of the feathers rating my skillset:
1. It is not explicit that the rating is based out of 5 feathers
3. The feathers are not properly aligned
3. The feathers are a little too large and eye-catching, which should not be the case as it distracts people from reading the texts
Taking these comments into consideration, I made the following amendments to my resume:
1. Used the Ruler tool to ensure that the feathers to indicate my level of proficiency in my resume are aligned (as shown below)
2. Reduced the size of the feathers and added light-gray feathers to show that the maximum rating is 5 feathers
The Brand Style Guide
The brand style guide was put together using Adobe InDesign. By making use of what I had learnt in tutorial regarding columns, gutters, and margins, I managed to create a well-organized and well-aligned layout for my publication. I decided to go with a 0.125-inch (12px) bleed because I found that it was a standard bleed for print jobs.
For the color of the background, I used InDesign’s eyedropper tool to sample the color of the sky from the photo I used as the cover page. This was because I wanted to create a coherent color scheme throughout my publication that matches the photos I used and the theme of my brand style guide.
For the photo on the last page of my brand style guide, I used a photo I had taken at airside at dusk. I chose this photo because I felt that the setting sun was a nice way to signify the end of my brand style guide. Since the photo was taken at dusk, the image was a little underexposed.
Hence, I made use of Photoshop’s functions, as shown below, to adjust the image by making it look brighter and more vibrant. The first thing I did was to raise the exposure, after which I adjusted the highlights and value of the blacks and whites to recover the details of the photo and to achieve a crisper look.
One of the comments I received for my brand style guide was that the inital light blue background color is a little too strong, which sometimes overpowers my copy text font (Proxima Nova), making it harder for readers to focus on the text. Keeping this in mind, I decided to choose a lighter blue color from the sample and changed the background color of my Brand Style Guide.
This sums up the creative process behind my brand style guide! I felt that it was a really interesting work as I was able to put a piece of myself in it and it is something that I am proud of, as before this module, I would have never imagined that I would be able to come up with a publication with my own two hands. Overall, NM3217 has truly been an enriching module.
