Brand Corporate Identity | Task 2 -Logo

Brand Corporate Identity / Task 2 -Logo

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24.4.2024 - 30.5.2024 (Week 3 -Week 6)
Chen Nan / 0363533
Brand Corporate Identity/ Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Task 2 / Logo

Lecture

BCI_4_Brand Ideals

A brand is a person's feeling about a product or a company. When consumers choose a brand, they can distinguish these products from other products.

“A brand ideal is a higher purpose of a brand or organization that goes beyondthe product or service they sell. According to Stengel, “The ideal is the brand's inspirational reason for being. It explains why the brand exists and the impact it seeks to make in the world.”(Garbe, 2012)

Brand values bring engagement, and guide and strengthen you to have a better connection with your target consumers. Brand value can guide you to maintain the right direction in the market and keep the core values of the brand fixed and stable. Brand values It is what can truly transform your relationship with your customers. Good brand value cases work because they reflect the ideology of the consumer and they are passionate about the business.

“A brand ideal is a higher purposeof a brand or organization thatgoes beyond the product or servicethey sell.”

Ideals are essential in the creation and design process, and they require the following:

• Vision

Being an articulate and passionate leader is the foundation of a good brand. Insist on achieving what they think is possible. It is important to listen face to face, to take the time to share your bold dreams, so that people can understand the power of symbols.

• Meaning 

 Meaning is rarely immediately apparent, but rather evolves over time. Designers can translate meaning through unique visual forms and expressions. The meaning of this transformation needs to be explained clearly so that it can be understood, communicated and recognized. All elements of a brand identity system should have a framework that represents meaning and logic.

• Authenticity 

Authenticity refers to self-knowledge and making decisions that are consistent with that self-knowledge. Organizations that understand their positioning and value are well positioned to create brand identity from the start. Such organizations create sustainable and authentic brands. The expression of the brand must fit the organization's unique mission, history, culture, values, and personality. Customers identify with brands that they believe are personal, memorable, and most importantly, they perceive as authentic.

• Differentiation

Brands not only compete with each other in their business categories, but to some extent with all the brands competing for our attention, attention, and loyalty. The world is full of choices, so why should consumers choose one brand over another? It's not enough to just be different, brands need to show that difference and make it easy for customers to understand what makes them unique.

• Sustainability

Brands are transmitters of trust. Our institutions, technology, science, lifestyles and vocabulary are constantly changing. Consumers should feel comfortable with a recognizable and familiar trademark. The sustainability of the brand is achieved through long-term adherence to the value of the core concept. Brands need to be able to transcend change.

• Coherence

Whether a customer is using a product, talking to a service representative, or buying on an iPhone, the brand should feel familiar. Consistency ensures that all elements come together in an ideal way to build trust, foster loyalty and keep customers happy. The brand identity system is visually and structurally unified, based on a coherent brand architecture, using specially designed colors, fonts and formats. This identity system helps companies achieve instant recognition across a variety of media and supports brand attributes.

• Flexibility

Innovation requires a brand to be flexible, and a brand that is open to change needs a flexible brand identity system. Flexibility allows brands to quickly seize new opportunities in the market. The Brand Identity toolkit encourages creativity within certain parameters while maintaining brand identity. A carefully crafted balance between control and creation enables brands to adhere to identity standards while achieving specific marketing goals.

• Commitment

A brand is an asset that needs to be protected, maintained and nurtured.

Active management: Active brand management requires top-down command and bottom-up understanding. Building, protecting and enhancing a brand requires a desire and disciplined approach to ensure brand integrity and relevance. Continuous management, dynamic adherence to core concepts, monitoring standards, and providing the tools an organization needs are key to maintaining brand equity.

• Value

The biggest goal of most organizations is to create value. The pursuit of sustainability expands the value conversation with consumers. The new business model is a combination of social responsibility, environmental awareness and profitability. A brand is an intangible asset in which brand identity maintains that value.

BCI_5_Positioning

Brand positioning is the process of positioning a brand in the minds of customers, also known as a positioning strategy, brand strategy, or brand positioning statement. Willis distinguishes between strategy and positioning, arguing that strategy is a long-term plan that influences the positioning of a brand. Strategy is like mapping, while positioning is about determining location and destination.

Positioning is going to occur whether clients like it or not, The question is,whether they'd like a hand in positively shaping it in the minds of the target audience. Most do.

4 different positioning strategies:

Arm Wrestling：Challenge market leaders and beat them on their home turf. This is possible in established markets with no clear leader. However, this requires a lot of money and time.

Big fish, smaller pond：Focus on an overlooked market segment where there is often a larger market leader that is not meeting a specific need. The advantage is that the target audience has a frame of reference, but the disadvantage is that the market leader is likely to match your product or service.

Reframe the market：Redefine the market and redefine the existing market in new terms. It makes the advantages previously emphasized by market leaders irrelevant and even tedious. This positioning applies when the product/service is innovative, or when market needs/expectations change.

Change the game：Changing the rules of the game for situations where there is no market category. You are the first unique being that can create your own market.

So how do you determine positioning?

In order to create a position strategy, you must first identify your brand's uniqueness and determine what differentiates you from your competition.

I can try to answer these three questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• Why does it matter?

According to Bueno (2019) There are 7 key steps to effectively clarify yourpositioning in the marketplace:

1. Determine how your brand is currently positioning itself
2. Identify your direct competitors
3. Understand how each competitor is positioning their brand
4. Compare your positioning to your competitors to identify your uniqueness
5. Develop a distinct and value-based positioning idea
6. Craft a brand positioning statement
7. Test the efficacy of your brand positioning statement

How to create a brand positioning statement (Beuno,2019)

There are four essential elements of a best-in-class positing statement:

Target Customer: What is a concise summary of the attitudinal and demographic description of the target group of customers your brand is attempting to appeal to and attract?

Market Definition: What category is your brand competing in and in what context does your brand have relevance to your customers?

Brand Promise: What is the most compelling (emotional/rational) benefit to your target customers that your brand can own relative to your competition?

Reason to Believe: What is the compelling evidence that your brand delivers on its brand promise?

INSTRUCTION

Task 2A/ Research & Analysis

In this task we need to find 28 logos to analyze them. I collected them on my mobile app and in some shopping malls.

Fig 1.1 Task 2A 

Task 2B: Logo Design

We need to create a brand, but before we can create a brand we need to answer the following five questions.

Fig 2.1 Brand Ideas

Mind Map

After the selected brand is approved, I need to create two mind maps, one about the brand company and the other about the brand name.

Fig 2.2 Mindmap-Business

 

Fig2.3 Mindmap-Brand name

Sketches

This week, I also drew two logo sketches, because I did not have a deep understanding of my own brand and a systematic plan, my draft was a failure.

Fig 2.4 Logo Sketches 1

Fig 2.5 Logo Sketches 2

After Ms' Li's feedback, I learned where I made mistakes. My brand name mind map was not complete enough, which hindered the progress of my logo, so I re-improved my brand name mind map and logo draft.

Fig2.6 Mindmap-Brand name 2

Fig 2.7 Logo Sketches 3

Fig 2.8 Logo Sketches 4

Digitalization

I chose two drafts to digitize, both of which have some traditional elements that fit my brand.

Fig 2.9 The first logo digitization 1

Fig 2.10 The first logo digitization 2

Fig 2.11 The first logo digitization 3

Fig 2.12 The first logo digitization 4

Fig 2.13 The first logo digitization 5

Ms told me that my fourth digitisation could be improved a lot, so I targeted the fourth and fifth digitisation images.

Fig 2.14 The second logo digitization 1

Fig 2.15 The second logo digitization 2

Finally, I chose this one, and typeset the text of the logo, and then chose the color for coloring.

Fig 2.16 Final logo 

Final Submission

Fig 2.17 Final Submission PDF

GIF

Fig 2.18 Final Submission GIF

FEEDBACK

week 4

I can choose sketch 2 and sketch 13 to continue the production, which are more in line with my brand. Try changing the lines of the logo.

week 5

Idea 4 & 5 to be further developed. Look back at your sketches. The division of positive and negative space is more interesting there and the line form is less rigid (some strokes have extra serif like curves and bends that make the division of space interesting). Currently what has been explored can also be refined by looking at the line quality of the brandmark (ie. which lines needs to have a thicker/thinner strokes, which line can be more organic/simplified/rigid, maybe the frame itself needs to be thickened to balance off the more organic lines inside). Additionally, explore the typeface chosen for wordmark with options as comparison.

week 6

2A Able to accurately identify the types of logo selected for analysis as well as the various aspects of logo design (colour, typography, graphic element). Can benefit from own analysis/opinion to reflect more critical thinking ability. Do include your references to credit the sources. 2B More space needed between the wordmark and the pictorial mark of the logo design. Gaps between lines forming pictorial mark may need to be widened and standardised to create impact (currently too tight, may get lost). There should be three version of logo in reverse and logo in colour based on three iteration of logo in black and white. Measurement in space rationalisation is not relevant when logo usage requires various sizes. An indicative component of connection between the measurements is better ie. x, 2x, 3x. Graphic lines (indication grid for space rationalisation, component taken to measure logo clearspace) besides logo design should be in grey as instructed. Tagline could be better read as ‘Enjoy your tea’ since it relates more to a ‘clear heart’ and a ‘teahouse’. Be careful of the text content in logo with rationale (the name of brand has been changed twice?). Similarly in logo minimum size, there should be three iterations of the logo in minimum size as per design. Full brandmark minimum size is too small (as can be seen from the wordmark legibility). There is room for improvement in the selection of brand typeface in that it does not approximate the wordmark typeface and can provide more variation in type usage (where is typeface used for tagline?). However, it can still work if there is strong typographic skills which will be seen in next task when applying the ideas. Positioning of components to form patterns need to be more systematic as in the nature of patterns (gaps and repetitive ideas are cohesive). Be careful that your gif. wordmark should be accurate to the typeface used for final logo design.

REFLECTION

I learned a lot in this task. Starting with the sketch, at first, my sketch was a mess and did not achieve the expected effect, I did not think seriously. A brand should consider its uniqueness and identity. Although all my drafts are the logos of teahouses, many of them are not in line with my brand. I need to design this logo in combination with my brand.

In the 2A project, I analyzed a lot of logos and found that each brand logo has its own brand meaning. By analyzing them, I have a deeper understanding of logo design.