D4b - Blog Posts
Having completed my Logo and drafted my brand standards, I began trying to figure out ways to apply my brand. Here’s what I came up with for my presentation.
This week I created some rules for my logo. My logo is interesting because it’s rather playful in nature and there’s a lot that can be done with it. I have three possible marks that can be used to represent place and four base colours to play with as well.
This base set of rules is a good way to get me going on my brand guide. There’s a lot more to implement though, and I’m excited to keep going.
Competitor Analysis
My main competitor for Place is the Nanaimo Entertainment Centre. This is the only sort of location downtown that serves a similar purpose to what I’m going for with Place, even then, it isn’t quite the same. The Entertainment Centre is an old movie theatre that offers the use of the entire building for $500/24 hrs.
Unfortunately for me, the centre does not seem to have any actual branding and is sadly, a building that seems to be in disuse. When I walked through it, I felt this vast feeling inside me, nostalgia for a past I didn’t participate in and awe at the high ceilings. The place is a gem in the downtown core that gets overlooked because the building itself is in disrepair and it is not much to look at from the outside. With some proper branding and some money poured into it, I think it could be a good competitor for what I want Place to be. Still, the goal of the entertainment centre is to offer a rental location for various events in the community for a relatively cheap cost.
Unfortunately, the competitor analysis for the group that I was in for class was far too different to be of use to me. My group was dealing with tour companies, a museum and a water taxi service so costs and branding were all over the place. My audience is also different as they are not tourists, but members of the community who I want to be tourists in their own city.
Learning about the Entertainment Centre only cemented my feeling that Place would be a good fit for Nanaimo.
We’ve Got Colour
So with a chosen logo to work with, I now have to figure out colour. I know these posts have been a little bit long-winded but bear with me here, typing all this out is helping me think as well.
When working with colour, it’s important to think about emotions you’re trying to get across as well as what your audience is. Since my audience is the community, I want to use colours that are welcoming and friendly.
I started by collecting some colours that I like. I usually do this by looking at other work I’ve done and picking from photos that fit the mood of the project.
Lately, I’ve been really into softer, bright colours.
These are some of the colour combos that I played with for this project but ultimately, I’ve ended up on the pale yellow, red and blue. They’re a softer take on a fully saturated primary palette. I may use the light pink as well later in some pattern work.
Yellow = optimism, happiness, enthusiasm, hope red = passion, love, fire, determination blue = sea, sky, confidence, calm
We’ve Got Shapes
So step one was to make some rough shapes on my ipad and then bring them into illustrator to make them into vectors. I tried to keep the style similar to the circle so that they would all match well and ended up with this:
Alright, not bad. You’ve got a square to promote balance, structure and in a more abstract sense, community and integrity. The circle represents wholeness, infinity, oneness. The triangle is known to be the strongest shape to build with as any weight placed on them is evenly distributed amongst the sides. Triangles also represent harmony.
Placing them in a line like this makes them look a little like building blocks, or children’s toys. The idea is that you can build Place into a space you need it to be.
Rough: verb.work or shape (something) in a rough, preliminary fashion."flat surfaces of wood are roughed down"
That’s a cool meaning and it applies well to Place because it’s supposed to be a space that you can make your own during use.
Just to be sure, I also tried out smoothing out the shapes so that I could see whether a rough shape or a smooth shape would be better.
At this point, I’m still undecided. I feel like rough and smooth have very different meenings to me. I like the way the rough one looks because it feels more organic and handmade, which is the type of community I’m trying to promote and reach with place. I want Place to be like a community hub and don’t want it to come across too polished.
On the other hand, I want Place to still appeal to higher-end events as well, despite the playful atmosphere of the logo shapes. In that sense, I think the smoother shapes could do better. I also know that the smoother shape would shrink down easier, and probably be easier to work within the long run. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessary to choose one or the other. There may be opportunities to use both styles depending on the event.
Let’s Take a Sec Here
So last week, I took my hundred thumbs and whittled them down to three choices. Those three choices didn’t really feel that great so I started working on more thumbs but found that throughout them, I was fixated on geometry. I was drawing cubes, cones, triangles and a lot of circles. I thought that was maybe just me doodling mindlessly.
Perhaps it was or maybe it was my brain compartmentalizing my thinking, literally putting my thoughts into boxes to be taken off the shelf and stacked up later until I had the semblance of a thing. Design, in all of its facets, can be boiled down to one thing: making things. Sometimes our brains make in chunks first and we work so closely with those chunks that we don’t realize there’s a whole big picture we’ve missed until someone else points out what’s been right under your nose all along.
Last week my prof took my circle design and asked me why I didn’t just continue with that, but with a whole line of slightly wobbly geometry. I want to show you my emotions about that through this excellent clown illustration above by @nerimative on instagram.
As you can see, it perfectly displays the feeling within when one performs the blunder described by my oma as ‘looking with your nose instead of your eyes’.
Anyway, back to it.
Here are some vector versions of the logos I have chosen to work with and some possible colours to use as well. I plan to choose one of these and work on it further, I’m sure I’ll have a better idea of what I can do with these options after some feedback from my peers.
The Core Values of Place
If you build it, they will come.
Together we can do so much.
Do something today that benefits tomorrow.
You have power, do good.
A hearth should always be warm.
We share this Place with everyone.
Design For Business
One of the biggest things that people think of when they think of graphic design is logo design. I must admit that it isn’t necessarily an area that I feel particularly strong in. Conceptualizing a logo isn’t easy though, I shouldn’t speak like it is. Sure, you can go online and pay someone five dollars for a logo for your business, but when you do that, you’re getting the quality of work that you pay for.
The process of branding a business is definitely more than a five dollar job. A logo takes thought and care, it shouldn’t be taken lightly because a logo can and usually stick with a business forever, depending on how successful the logo is. A logo can even add to the success of the business it’s for.
The current project that I’m working on to develop my branding skills, is creating the logo for a business designed to promote tourism for Vancouver Island.
Because I noticed a real lack of it and I love taking the opportunity to promote tourism within my own city, I decided to imagine a venue downtown that could be used for a multitude of things, its main purpose being to promote a sense of place and provide a venue for activities in Nanaimo such as open mics, community classes, receptions, showcases, art shows, intimate concerts, etc. The opportunities are pretty endless. In the summer it could double as an information center downtown for tourists and hold informative talks about Nanaimo’s history. It could be a gathering place for those that come in on cruise ships and a banquet hall.
I decided to keep it simple and name it ‘Place’. As in, “That could be a good place”, “This is your place”, “This Place is so cool.” I felt that calling it Place gives it almost a sense of ownership to Nanaimo.
Before getting into sketching, I started with a mind map. Mind maps are a really good way to get some concepts and ideas down on paper, things that you maybe didn’t even realize were connected before can all come together in a mind map. I also filled out the survey seen in the post previous to this one. I decided to focus on uses, anatomy of the place, emotions that should be evoked when thinking about the Place and associations I wanted to be made with it.
Then I went on to starting to draw out some logo concepts. These all look a little goofy but there’s a reason to the rhyme and a rhyme to the reason. Before you can have some truly good ideas, sometimes you need to get rid of the excess thinking in your brain. I worked fast to try and get some of the bad ideas out first and tried a lot of different things, in some simply trying symbols, and others only trying word marks.
I’ve got a couple of pages more of these little logo sketches but they aren’t much better. While I worked on them, despite getting out a lot of ideas, in some instances I only felt frustrated. I know there’s a logo concept there that’s truly great but just out of reach. If I need to get all of these ones out first before I can get at it, then so be it. In the end, I wound up with around 100 little sketches, give or take.
Having definitely exhausted my creativity when it comes to the letter ‘P’, I’ll probably work on narrowing these concepts down to just three choices and develop them for the next step in the logo process. If I don’t like anything I have, I’ll just have to sketch another hundred up. (The joys of being a graphic designer. :)
Client Survey
General Company Info
What is the name of your company? Place
What is your business/what do you do? Place provides a single location for a range of events in Nanaimo’s downtown core. It can be a pop-up market, a venue for a reception, an intimate concert, a wedding, a dance, an art class, the possibilities are endless.
How old is your company? The company has yet to exist.
What is the size of your company? A small core of people involved in bettering downtown Nanaimo. two people leading a small team of 5-6.
Are there specific dates the project needs to be completed? No.
Your budget dictates how much time can be spent on your project. What is the budget? Open
Describe your business in one sentence. No matter what event you are hosting, this is the place for it.
Describe your business in two words? Convenient, Reliable
Describe your business in one word? Perfect
What doesn’t your business do, or do well? Does not host large concerts, or sporting events.
What differentiates your business from competitors? Ease of access, Place’s main interest isn’t how much money can be made but in creating a place for the community to use without burning a hole in people’s wallets.
Is there a story that is unique to your company? When searching for a location for a grad show, Sara realized that there really wasn't’ anywhere in the downtown core that was appropriately sized or available for a small reception.
Or perhaps a unique story to the company name? Every city should have a place, somewhere that you can go that would be good for a range of events, but also a safe please for youth to hang out and host community events.
What are your business objectives? To create a beautiful place to host events that can host a range of things from shows, events, receptions, to tourist attractions in the summer months like a large market or informational sessions.
What do you want the design/redesign to do for your company? I want it to give the company a modern look and feel that is also welcoming to the community.
General Image of Company
If you company/brand was a person who would it be? Why? I don’t know if it would be a person so much as a representation or even an animal. Place should be able to represent Nanaimo and the future of Nanaimo and its community. If anything, I’d say that I’d want it to be represented by the Orca because of its sense of community and ties to the Salish sea.
Is there an important object, building or person for your business? The building for this business is what makes the business and it would be located right downtown, on the water.
How do you want the public to perceive your image? A meeting hall, a place that represents Nanaimo, a sense of place for Nanaimo. It should feel like home but also fresh.
What do you want to be famous for? Being the place that people go to when they need a place.
What words should the general public associate your business with? Name at least 3. Modern, Inviting, Perfect
How do you want your image to be seen in 2 years? 10 years? Comfortable, familiar, renowned
Competitors
Who are your competitors? Vancouver Island Conference Center, Port Theatre
How are they better/worse than your product/service? Vancouver Island Conference Center has a larger space to host larger events, Port theatre has better space for theatrical events.
Who might you compete with in the future? More developments.
The Target Audience
Who is your customer? Describe in detail. My customer is anyone who is looking to use a space but is having trouble finding a good venue for it. A lot of people in Nanaimo have to settle for a venue that isn’t necessarily ideal and we are lacking a community spot.
What do they do? Live in Nanaimo and actively work towards bettering the downtown community via productions or events.
What do they watch? Community productions, local musicians, short plays, open mics.
Who is the ideal customer? Someone who perhaps wants to bring more culture to the city but lacks the funding/space.
How old is your ideal customer? 20-60
How do they find out about you? Through advertisements downtown, facebook, Nanaimo’s website
What do they want from you? A place to host an event.
What customers do you not want to attract? People who want to host an extremely large event or have the money to do so elsewhere. (Large corporate events that exceed capacity)
What do you offer your customers that your competition does not? A place that can be molded easily to fit their needs. The place isn’t designed a certain way to format one specific thing so it means its a space that can be used for a variety of things without many spacial issues.
Current identity
Do you have an identity? No
What are two identities or logos that you like? Dislike? I like the CBC logo and the CNR logo. I don’t like the Nanaimo Chamber logo
What colours do you like? Dislike? I like sunset colours and when you just use multiple shades. I don’t like intense greens or dull colours.
Anything else?
What did we not ask that you want us to understand? The Place isn’t like anything that’s already in Nanaimo because it isn’t held back by a small size or a regular business, it isn’t meant to make money from events, just enough to cover expenses. It’s meant to be somewhere rentable that people can use to host a variety of events and promote community within Nanaimo.