Personal Branding

Building my personal brand and visual identity, from monogram sketches to a digital set of brand guidelines.

Research Notes

The Brief

My task is to design a brand identity that represents me as a designer and reflects my personality. Producing a monogram made up of my initals LC, a wordmark of my full name and a visual mark image that represents me so that future work and designs can be identified as my own. I began by researching and conducting multiple content audits in order to gain an understanding of how I wish to present myself. Through both my writing and designs, I hope to come across as a fun and bubbly character. From here I could begin sketching towards final digital designs.
Monogram

Starting with endless monogram sketches, I experimented with different styles of logo design with the help of inspiration from multiple books. I found it difficult combining L and C because of their contrasting shape, however figured that an illustrative style suited me better than block, bold shapes. I was particularly conscious of ensuring the L stood out before the C so that it would be read as LC rather than CL. After selecting the most popular idea, I began digitualising in order to work towards the perfect shape. It was a test making sure that the illustrative L shape in front was recognised as an L and not a lower case E, which was achieved by straightening the curve and closing the gap at the top. I was then able to explore the different possibilities of introducing colour. The final outcome of my monogram design, I believe, is sleek and simple shape but follows a clever flow.
Wordmark

Through sketching and digital mindmapping, I considered different typefaces that would match my monogram. My original ideas focused on illustrative fonts to partner with my monogram however I figured that similar styles clashed and my wordmark failed to stand out. Therefore developing towards a san serif font instead, settling on 'Rift Soft' as the chosen typeface. I believe this font has the ability to stand out because of it's tall, straight shape but still compliment my curvy monogram as the letters have rounded edges. It was important to me ensuring my monogram and wordmark work coherantly together because I knew that majority of the time they will be used together.
Visual Mark

For my visual mark, I began by mindmapping out potential ideas as I had no inital concepts spring to mind. I even asked friends and family to brainstorm ideas and a repeated suggestion was french plaits. I plait my hair that often that they felt this easily identified me. I used a photo of myself wearing french plaits to illustrate for accuracy, you may notice the image I followed is actually photoshopped as I preferred the sitting of my right plait in a different picture. Using endless curvature points, I replicated the same image digitally creating a basic outline where I developed from there. After many different variations and changes to my design, that involved multiple use of lines and strokes, I eventually striped it back and went for a more simplistic approach in order to fit in with the rest of my brand identity.
Visual Extensions

To complete my brand design, I produced a set of visual extensions by combining the shape of my monogram to create a repeating pattern. I created a number of variated designs, by using different colour combinations and pattern sizing. My visual extension will be used on the likes of business cards, button badges and other advertising mediums.
Brand Guidelines

When building a brand, it is important to create a set of brand guidelines so that my brand is used correctly by others in future. It simply sets out the do’s and don'ts for using my brand in a personal and friendly manner. Focusing on the importance of consistency regarding colour, type and layout.


View Brand Guidelines
Reflections

A complete brand design. I throughly enjoyed this branding task. It taught me the importance of brainstorming on pen and paper first as I can look back now as see how much my designs developed and changed from my original sketches. I love that I now have a simplistic yet well thought through monogram stamp beside my name that I can use to identify my work. My visual mark succesfully reflects me personally and as a designer and I love how it can be a standalone piece. I think I'll find myself continually developing my visual mark as I grow as a designer as already I can think of ways to improve it even with subtle changes. Overall I believe my personal brand shows consistency in terms of design and colour, which I think is most important when developing a brand identity.

Research Notes