Visual Identity Design

AUT Project by Cassie Khoo and Maria Rutherford

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REFLECTION

We handed our style guide over today. Went briefly over our presentation, making sure everything was right and where it was supposed to be. All that’s left now is the budget, and after that preparing to do the presentation first day back next semester.

Cassie’s Reflection:

I thoroughly enjoyed this first half of the semester, working in a pair with Maria. I felt we worked really well with each other. We had a nice balance of similarities and differences, enough so that it wasn’t just a process of ‘that looks nice’ (but then getting no critique), but more of a ‘that works, but what if we tried this? Oh yea. That works better.’ or ‘Nah, let’s just stick with the original’. This kind of team work is something I really value in our partnership – us being able to fluidly critique and comment on the work we’ve produced, bounce ideas off each other, and keep the other motivated and on track. 

I’ve haven’t always favoured working in groups or small teams, just because I find it doesn’t always work as well. There would always be someone who didn’t pull their weight, or get their tasks done, and I would always be the one trying to make up for that. Sometimes, no one really took the initiative to get the conversation going about what we needed to do. But with Maria, I felt we worked at a good pace, most importantly, we worked at a pace well together, and that’s something I find quite rare. It helped we both seem to have similar patterns in our design process – getting things done early and being motivated for the most part of the design process. We each pulled our own weight, and was on task with our own responsibilities. We were able to converse fluidly; no awkward silence in between or times where we didn’t have much to say. There was a good balance between work and simply discussing the project, and at times unrelated things. 

I don’t think I would have managed to get through all that work on my own, certainly not in the short time we managed to do it in (under two weeks for the good majority of the collateral and style guide!). It really does help to work as a team, and is certainly a good skill to have when going into the workforce. If you can work well both in a team and independently, you’re sure to do well in any situation. Overall, it was an absolute pleasure to work with Maria. I certainly look forward to working with her for the rest of the semester.

The overall project of re-designing our NGO’s visual brand identity, was in itself another rewarding part of this semester. I had a lot of fun and certainly learn a lot about the process and design behind a logo polish, creating a typeface and making it into a font, creating the style guide, whipping up a presentation, forming and adhering to a visual system, expanding my knowledge on infographics, getting work printed to the correct colour and most importantly the joys of working in a good team. 

The logo re-polish, which I took up after we both initially started on it, certainly felt like a long process of trying, testing, exploring, getting feedback and repeating until it reached a stage where it was good enough. Not perfect, but good enough. Having done a few logos now, at uni and for other things, I realise that the process will vary a lot between projects. For one project, the final chosen design could be a really straightforward thing, while for another project, it can take ages to get the right one. But I think in both cases, there is a certain process of generating multiple ideas, that needs to be done before the good ones appear/can be chosen as ‘a good logo’. If that makes any sense whatsoever. All in all, there is much more to the logo process than what many people believe. At the end of the day a logo looks like a perfect articulated representation of the brand, however there is a lot of work behind the scenes that goes into the creation and design of a really good logo – one that is concise yet simple and recognisable. 

The typeface was another fun extension of the brand. I certainly enjoyed doing that. My very first typeface. It’s certainly nowhere near perfect or as refined as a proper typeface, but it does its job in our visual system, so that’s good enough for me (for now). 

The style guide presented another opportunity for us to test our skills in publication design. I really do like making publications. Not so much of the content in them (thankfully Maria took the lead on that), but making a book come to life, build and increase page by page. The finished product always feels good, and there’s nothing better than holding a physical hard copy in your hands. Print will always fascinate me. Digital is something great, but a well designed printed book always feels a bit more cooler. To me anyway.

Another go at creating a presentation was in store this half semester. Presentations are tricky. It’s always hard to get a good balance of visual and text. Certainly, I think with the kind of presentation we had to prepare this half semester, one that we could use to present the project, but also so it made sense on its own (without explanation from one of us) made the task a bit trickier. Infographics and visual slides always look the best. It takes a good eye and a bit of practice to create good presentations. But when you can do it, you have under your belt the ability to create (and hopefully deliver) an amazing presentation to wow your audience (hopefully). 

Printing. I’ve already reflected on printing. It certainly was a big pain at times. But we got there in the end. And the final product looks amazing. So it was all worth it. Having learnt our lesson from previous projects, Maria and I aimed to, and met our self-assigned deadline to get the books off to the printers the Friday before. I think having done so alleviated some of the stress that comes with printing the day before hand in. It’s certainly something I want to continue doing in future projects to come.

All in all. I think this half semester was one of the best projects yet. A little stressful yes (due to all the other projects going on), but I really enjoyed sharing the burden of a project with someone else, working as a team, and getting to know the basic ins and outs of what goes into a style guide. 

Maria’s Reflection:

When we were first given this task of re-desigining an NGO’s visual identity, it was daunting to say the least. The nerves of picking out someones name from a box to be your partner, and then the sigh of relief when you realise you’re partnered up with Cassie, who's already a design buddy.  And then the nerves again at the realisation that there’s all this work to do, and only two of you  to complete it in a grand total of 8 weeks. Brilliant! Couldn’t wait to start! And we’ve done it!  What can I say, this assessment was quite challenging, and is our first look at the real world; potentially meeting with a client, and accomplishing an identity re-design. It’s sounds very serious and very real. Even as junior designers in the industry I can’t imagine being given such a job. I hadn’t a clue where we were going to start, how long different tasks were going to take, if we were doing it right, let alone how to try and write a formal email to actually make contact with this organisation!

Working with Cassie on this project has been brilliant, we get along and work together really well. I personally feel like I’ve learnt a lot from working with Cassie, I’ve been pushed to try and keep up with her on the project as she’s so driven and so organised! I’ll get home and Cassie’s already got a list of what we need to do for tomorrow. I feel we’ve been a great mix, both of us having slightly different strengths over this project. It was great to be able to bounce ideas of each other, and having someone who will give you good critique and help you when you get stuck. This sort of team relationship is what has led us to completing this project. Being able to completely trust one another, to put the time in and get the work done working side by side the whole way. During this project I’ve enjoyed the focus on trying to deeply understand this new NGO, to see how they work, and try and express their identity through the new design. With each logo concept and development we learnt more about the organisations identity, the difference between slightly curved corners vs angular, straight lines vs imperfect. Each small aspect of a design holds so much meaning behind it, so when you do a logo, an element of the collateral, or a written sentence for the style guide it has to be perfect. It’s amazing how smaller detail can suddenly change so much about the way the organisation is portrayed.  Even though when I was writing the book for Red Cross last semester I struggled and found it really hard, this time round tackling the writing for the style guide strangely enough I think I may have enjoyed it. Just a little. The writing was covered in three nights, not two weeks. I had a white board covered with notes for a sentence and paper brainstorms for different points of the identity that I was trying to write. After the catastrophe of the emails to the first given NGO, I’d already learnt that in formal writing each sentence you write can have an underlying meaning. You can write one thing, but it can be read in a completely different way, it’s like mind games! I tend to write as I would talk to someone, but its easy to forget that the written word is without the same expression and doesn’t carry the same emotion therefore meaning can sometimes be misinterpreted. So when I was writing the style guide I was just constantly questioning myself, so having Cassie there to proofread and double check everything was really good! When you get that string of sentences which sing ‘I am Auckland City Mission’, that’s when you can relax. The presentation was another big hurdle for me. I found trying to simplify the slides from what I thought was already a simplified style guide, was a bit of a mission.Trying to keep in mind the purpose of the presentation and keep things simple and clear. I’m so thankful that Cassie does infographics as her minor and produced the infographics for the presentation! I wouldn’t have known where're to start if I was to try doing one.

Printing. This was such fun... Thank goodness for the decision to go to Penrose to get the style guide printed, we got the quality we wanted and the quality this style guide deserved. The final style guide both looks and feels professional and I’m so proud of what Cassie and I have achieved. I look forward to working with Cassie on more projects in the future. 

What we learnt:

• All the information and detail you have to include into a style guide

• Printing quality is vital

• Simplicity is a powerful presentation

• Visuals are so important, and carry such powerful meaning

• Teamwork is built on trust, honesty, dedication, and good communication

• Formal writing has hidden meanings

• Small design aspects, have a great meaning

• Budgeting is scary, but necessary

• Uniformity of design style across media for a brand

• An idea of marketing strategy and how the organisation communicates to the target market groups • It is important to do your research. Get to know the ins and outs of what you’re trying to do. Learn from good examples.

• It helps to make a project schedule and try stick to it as best you can. Get organised!

• In designing for real world situations, you have to be realistic about who you’re designing for, how it functions, and its overall purpose.  

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Today I finally got my hands on our final printed beautiful brand style guide! I'm so happy with how it turned out, the printing is good quality and the paper stock we chose is perfect. So glad we went to Penrose to get it printed! Feeling quite proud.

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UPDATE: PRESENTATION, BUDGET, AND FINAL BRAND STYLE GUIDE

Our presentation is coming along nicely. The visual elements certainly work well. It’s slightly different from the presentation we all did at the beginning of the year, so we’ve both been confused at times about what exactly we need to include (in terms of content mostly – do we keep it short or do we explain it a bit more). Hopefully, between the two of us, we’ve managed to come up with something that is ok. 

We’re making the final edits to our presentation and preparing our budget as we speak. As I’ve been busy (more like having fun) doing the visual and infographics for the presentation, Maria has been looking and asking for quotes for our Budget, which we should be able to whip up tomorrow. In addition to writing the content for the presentation.

I went to collect our Brand Style Guide today. Here it is...

Thankfully, it all turned out well. At least in my eyes. It always feels good to hold the final product in your hands. We plan to hand in our ‘Brand Guidelines’ tomorrow and have already arranged a time with Eden. This meet up will allow Maria to have a look at the final Brand Style Guide (since I went to pick it up today myself) and for us to go over any last minute stuff if necessary, like the presentation and budget, before our due date on Friday. 

After everything is done. Each of us plan to write an individual reflection post on the entire half-semester. 

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STRATEGY PRESENTATION

So far for our presentation Cassie has started by creating our layout and I’ve had a look at the guide Eden gave us in class to start figuring out what content we’re going to put on each slide. We’ve got to remember that this presentation is to be put together as if we were to present to our client, so we need to give them enough information, without digressing too much into what they already know. In theory most of our content we can just pull from out style guide, the only difference is that it needs to be simplified, which is easier said then done. The slides should not be heavy with text, or be sparse and too plain. If we do this correctly, we will have slides which can speak for themselves; which means we don’t have to talk as much. The information will be visual and easy for anyone to understand, so that if the client could want to take it with them and present it to others or refer to it. 

Tomorrow we’ll go over the content for each slide and divide up the work so we can progress individually in our own time.

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OFF TO THE PRINTERS

Today we went to the City 3A printing company. Having gotten a decent quote and done some quality printing with them for our design research. Maria and I both felt this would be the best place to get the brand style guide printed and bound. We walked in, asked to get some pages tested to make sure the colour was right. I had done one test print last week, and while the colours weren’t bad, they weren’t exact, so it was important that we got it test printed and make sure the colours were indeed correct. 

Unfortunately they came out a little green, which made our blue more of a turquoise/teal colour. The guys at the printer informed us that digital printing has its pros and cons. Pros are that you can do small runs at a fraction of the cost it would be to print it commercially with a offset printer. And it can be done within the day, so in a fraction of the time. The cons are that digital printing has its limits with colour and quality, and we need to be considerate of those limitations. A digital printer cannot guarantee the exact pantone colour you choose, and often even if calibrated a digital printer cannot achieve the exact Pantone colour that an offset printer would. Ideally, with digital printers, the best way to go about it is to use a CMYK equivalent. Even with the same machine, a Fuji Xerox, in this case, one Fuji Xerox can be calibrated differently to another, so it is important to test several different printers. 

We also learnt that printing on uncoated paper, meant the colours would come out slightly different than if it were printed on coated paper. This is something valuable to keep in mind for future projects.

After this valuable discussion with the printing people at the city 3A, we asked and were recommended to go to the 3A in penrose. As binding is sent off to the penrose 3A anyway, Maria and I decided to go straight there. We were also informed their printer might have better luck with our colours.

So that afternoon, as Maria had class, I went over to the 3A in penrose. And fortunately the colours turned out well. Yay! I also learnt from the people there, it is always best to do a swatch test of possible colours you want to use, at the printer you want to get your design printed at. This way, you can be almost sure the colours will be as close as possible to the colour you desire. Particularly when it comes to digital printing. If you then base your CMYK choices as well as  Pantone and Web colours off that, then you are less likely to get major fluctuations in colour. 

As you can see from the quick snap I sent Maria, the left printed blue (from penrose 3A) turned out more accurate than the right (from city 3A). It really does pay to do test printing. Particularly when colour is a big part of the design, and it is essential that it is done right. Hopefully when we get back the final product next Tuesday, everything is fine.

I’ve certainly learnt a whole lot from this printing fiasco. And looking back at the brand publication from semester one, I realise how lucky I was that the colours turned out perfectly fine in my printing. From this round of printing, I’ve learnt a new list of things. Such as swatch tests early on in the design process. Test printing for colour and quality. Overall a lesson well learnt. And some valuable information picked up. Maria’s Notes: Yes, printing was a bit of a fiasco. In my opinion the city 3A printery, had a very defeatist attitude, and came across as, (I quote), ‘this is as good as it gets’. It was interesting the long list of reasons as to why the colour didn’t print the way we wanted. I didn’t know that you couldn’t print Pantone colours with a digital printer and that you needed to find a CMYK equivalent. However rather than help us find a solution and work with us to get the print result we wanted they basically just shrugged their shoulders. I’m so glad that we’ve taken our printing to Penrose, and I really hope that the colour comes out as well as it did with the test print.

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PROOF READ & PRINTING

Now that the brand style guide is essentially done, Maria and I have both independently proof read the brand style guide. Hopefully between the two of us, we’ve managed to pick up any last mistakes. 

I’ve also prepared the files ready for printing. Making sure all the images Maria has edited to the correct colour standards as per our brand guidelines, are at the right dpi specifications and such for print. Our plan is to visit 3A in the city (up on Nelson St) tomorrow to hand over the files and get a few test prints done to make sure the quality of the colour is up to par. I’ve already been in contact with them and have gotten a quote for our job. Hopefully all goes well.

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FINAL CRITIQUE

Today, after doing the last haul of pages for the brand style guide yesterday, we showed Eden the extra pages (particularly the photography ones) to make sure they were all ok. There were a few minor changes to make, nothing overly major. So generally, we are pretty much done with the guts of the brand style guide. It comes as a huge relief, as this now means we can get this off to the printers after doing a final proof read and preparing all the files properly. 

I’m really happy with the progress Maria and I made over the last week. Essentially, we’ve managed to get the collateral and style guide done and dusted in just under 2 weeks. And well on time so that there is more than enough time to get it printed and bound well ahead of the due date. 

As I’ve learnt from doing the brand publication last semester, getting a lot of the work done before the last class, enables us to get feedback on the whole book in its almost completed stage. This is valuable for not only ensuring the whole publication is good, but that the extra last minute stuff isn’t rushed and not thought out properly.

I also made a mini book of the brand style guide as I did for my brand last semester. Aside from being fun to make, (something not as intense – no thinking required) it was a good way of going through and making sure it all works well.

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FINAL WRITING

Working like stormtroopers, we are so so so close to finishing the style guide it’s getting quite exciting. The photography section of the style guide is finished; all the writing has been done, and we have now got edited photos and photo rules!  All the edits and fix ups from the last critique have also been finished. Cassie and I are aiming to finish this style guide for tomorrow. In theory all we may need to do are some small fix ups, but we are aiming to get the seal of approval from Eden so we can get it printed.  So heres to our final draft, and our final critique tomorrow.

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STYLE GUIDE CRITIQUE: WRITING

Today we showed Eden our very nearly finished style guide. Cassie has put together nearly every page, and we’ve got over half of the writing done. 

We worked together on the writing. I wrote up majority of it, Cassie being the proof reader. There were some sections which Cassie was more familiar with such as the typography section since she worked on the type and the rules on what to do, and what not to do; I filled in any that we missed. There were a few sections where we both got a bit confused on what should be written so we left those out ready to talk to Eden about them. Overall, the writing was good, which was a great relief as me being me, I felt a bit worried. Eden picked up on all the grammatical errors with her x-ray vision, changing the odd word to make things sound a little better, and guided us on the small sections we got stuck on. But over all the writing is definitely on the right track, we just need to do the few fix ups she pointed out, and continue on to the finish line. The sections we have left are the photography, bibliography (I think Cassie’s on to this one already), and a small paragraph or two for the collateral pages.  I also need to remember to edit the photos so they all have the same tone and feel to them, I keep forgetting.

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When you form a team, why do you try to form a team? Because teamwork builds trust and trust builds speed.

Russel Honore

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PROGRESS UPDATE: STYLE GUIDE

Over the weekend, Maria worked mostly on the collateral and writing of the style guide, while I fleshed out the overall content and design of the book, as we established after our Wednesday meeting with Eden. We’ve gotten a lot of our content in. Written and placed in with imagery/illustrations, so there is now a clearer picture of what we have. This hopefully will enable us to get some decent feedback from Eden tomorrow in our second-to-last feedback/critique session before we leave on break. Our goal was to get to this stage for this very reason, and we’ve managed somehow to do just that. It really helps to break down the process into small chunks and work on those chunks one by one. I’ve also learnt the value of having a teammate with you. It enabled us to work efficiently on several things at once. Meaning that the overall task wasn’t as daunting. 

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FIRST DRAFT OF STYLE GUIDE

Today for critique we had read our first initial draft for our style guide so we could see if the layout we had was going to work.  We checked in on the collateral developments we’d done since the class critique finalising the final changes for the main collateral designs; website, business card, letter head and email signature. Cassie even followed up on Mondays’ critique about the letter head and how the letter should be folded, she actually looked it up and watched some videos on how to properly fold one. Most of the critique from Eden were small things such as making the names on the business cards a point size smaller, and helping us decide on a rule for our photos in a section of the book. We made notes of all the small adjustments on our printed out work and then set about making a plan on what work we were to complete for Monday. Wednesday next week is our last critique session so between now and Monday, Cassie and I will work to complete as much of the style guide as we can. Cassie will be working on putting the style guide together, working with the layout, images, type styles and putting each page together. Mean while I am to finish up some of the remaining collateral elements such as the car livery and banner, but most of my time will be spent on the writing for the style guide. The writing and style guide design is the most important as it will need to be checked by Eden on Monday. The writing will need to be checked over especially to make sure that what I’ve written is appropriate and in the right tone. Remaining collateral shouldn’t be too hard to put together as because of the collateral we’ve already designed, we have got a frame in which to work with.

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FIRST CLASS CRITIQUE

Today we had our first class critique, it was so good to see everyones work; what NGO they’d been given, and how they were progressing. Favourite NGO has to be the Upsidedowns which Nathan and Anna are working with because it’s so fun and playful. For this critique Cassie and I had aimed to make a solid start on half of our collateral focusing on the website, business card, letter head and email signature. It was great fun working on these as for the long list of collateral, I feel these were the main important ones. From our last critique Eden mentioned also trying to design a few patterns which could then be used for some of the collateral and give anyone who picks up the style guide some material to work with. 

While I was at work Cassie made a start on all of them, when I came home I simply added to them where I could, and drafted up some more ideas. The great thing about working together is that both of us have something different to bring to the table, each of us picking up on things the other person hasn’t. By the end of the weekend I feel we had a good variation of developments for each collateral.  Feedback from critique: No patterns. The patterns we had quickly put together were not really working, and we didn’t really know where we would use them in our collateral. As a possibility we could look into some light textures, but at the end of the day it’s not crucial.

Our logo shouldn’t be in a solid coloured rectangle.

Eden also showed us that when you are designing a letter head, you should print the full letter out and fold it, because you don’t want to have a letter designed so that when it is folded the crease runs through the text. A standard letter is folded into thirds, Cassie and I need to check on this and perhaps even specify in the brief how you should fold a letter. Through all the difference pieces of collateral we did the logo had been placed in different positions, left aligned, right aligned, centred ect. We could work to find a fixed alignment of the logo which could then link back to logo specifications with a fixed ‘clear space’ which surrounds the logo protecting it from other elements sit

For our website pages we found this picture of a homeless man.

Cassie and I both really love this photo, Gjoko and Eden were in agreement that the colour scheme of this photo; slight muted colours and warm blue undertones, are quite fitting for our NGO. We can use this photo as a guide to editing other photos to try and accomplish a similar feel. 

For the website we are looking at giving it more visual style, compared to their existing site which is predominantly text. Cassie did some quick symbols which were for the Winter Appeal, this was a way of visualising information and introducing the same illustrative style which have in our logo. 

Generally with the various website page ideas we had, it was a case of combining our favourite elements of each webpage design together to create our final.

For our business card we brought back the stamp idea which we had originally planned for the food parcels. The business cards  could  be made from  recycled paper, all the text information printed on one side, and then other other a stamp. This stamp could be versatile and used also on the food parcel boxes.  But there would need to be rules decided on how the stamp was applied as the stamp could look intentionally crooked, be the wrong way round, or look like it’s not straight and be viewed as a mistake. It would also be time consuming and another cost for the organisation to consider. So we’ve decided to scrap the stamp idea and just stick with a simple basic printed business card, on 300gsm card - of course. 

“A good quality business card forms respect.” - Gjoko. This quote was then backed up by a snippet of American Psycho. 

Take Business Cards Seriously.

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UPDATE: COLLATERAL PROGRESS

Over the weekend, leading up to Monday’s (17th August) upcoming class critique, Maria and I have been getting on with the collateral. Having reached a good stage with our logo (only a few minor edits needed) we decided we’d better start with our collateral. At this stage, we started to explore the visual style of the brand based on the style we had been establishing in our logo. We haven’t really decided on a particular style. This is something we’d need to get feedback on on Monday’s critique. So for now we’ve tested the possibilities of the style for the brand and how this would be applied across the different collateral.

A lot of the work is just exploration, as we try to find a style that works best for the brand. More to come after Monday’s critique.

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THE AUCKLAND CITY MISSION TYPEFACE

To go with our brand’s style, we decided that creating a custom-designed typeface based on that used in the logo, would help to extend the style across the brand.

So I went back to the fun process of writing out the entire alphabet by hand in the same typeface used in the logo. I soon realised writing a sentence ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ was going to be a lot easier and more realistic in getting the right characters for the typeface. I would say the hardest characters were again ‘S’, I ended up using the one from the logo, and the special characters like ‘&’, ‘@’ and ‘*’. Trying to do these predominantly curved characters in a boxy/squared style was tricky. It didn’t help they were quite detailed and were hard to fit in the general rectangle shape. 

Having seen typefaces along the corridor of our level 5 hallways, I initially wondered if I would be able to create a full typeface for this project. And while its not a perfectly refined typeface, correctly formatted with the right kerning and leading. I’m quite pleased with the stage to which I brought this typeface. Even making it into a type-able font. That was probably one of the most rewarding moments of the typeface-making process – becoming a type-able font. :) 

A lot of time goes into creating the perfect typeface. There is a lot more to it than just designing the characters. Putting each character into the font file, kerning each one perfectly in every combination of letters possible. Learning about open and closed type. All the little things that go into the process of designing and creating a single typeface is one big job. But for the scale and  size of this project (including the time frame), I’m quite happy and satisfied with the level I’ve achieved with this typeface.

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LOGO PROCESS

When we Maria and I first started working on the logo, we decided because the logo already has so much history and significance to it, we didn’t need to change it, but rather give it a bit of a polish up. Having said that, the little bit of a polish up took a lot more effort and time than I had originally thought. In order to get the logo up to a standard that satisfied not only our tutors, but ourselves was tricky. It was a lot of trial and error, re-drawing over and over to get just the right style to match the brand. But in the end we got there. Having been assigned to this particular task of polishing up the logo, I have learnt quite a lot in the process of it all. Here’s a brief rundown on what went on with the logo polishing process.

STAGE 1

This was the original logo for the Auckland City Mission. While the general core of it (the logotype and the building illustrations) made a strong, clever logo, both Maria, I and Gjoko felt that the style of the type and the illustrations didn’t match up, and that to better reflect the brand and be consistent within the logo itself, the whole logo needed to reflect that hand-drawn, illustrative feel. 

STAGE 2

Eager to get on with the design after a whole two weeks of getting in contact with the NGO and research, both Maria and I started to draft up some logos. At this stage we mainly re-drew the buildings in a tidier manner and focused primarily at testing out hand-written type for the logotype. Above shows the first initial designs of the logo we came up with. When we went for our weekly meeting with Gjoko, he said we were not yet on the right track. He suggested the logotype should be square-ish to match the squareness of the building illustrations. And that it was ok to ‘modern’ up the illustration of the buildings a bit more, such as taking out the double roof on the house, and fixing up the linework. This was certainly something I learnt from this. I wasn’t really sure about how far I could actually take it with re-polishing the logo. Could I completely change it while still having the general essence of the logo there? Or could I only alter it slightly so that as much of the original remained as possible. I guess part and parcel of that would be a more in-depth insight from the client on how much they’re willing to have the logo changed and modified in a refresh.

STAGE 3

Having gotten some valuable feedback from Gjoko on where to proceed next with the logo. Maria and I decided that I would continue with the logo by myself, with Maria adding her feedback when needed. Gjoko said that in order to really test, explore and get the hand-drawn elements right, one needs to repeat it over and over again. This allows the hand to get used to it and slowly get better at it. He also proposed rewriting the logotype at least 50 times in order to really get the hand of it. So that’s what I did....

I went through pages and pages of my sketchbook just writing ‘Auckland City Mission’ over and over and over again. Different kinds of ‘square-ish’ fonts, with different kinds of pens, different sizes, weights. I found the letter ‘S’ to be particularly hard to write in a boxy, square type. Overall, I really went all out with it. It was a rather fun, and rewarding experience. I simply sat there and wrote it over and over until I got sick of writing it and I couldn’t come up with anything new. 

Once I got the initial hand-written type out of the way, I proceeded with the buildings, removing the double-roof and reworking the lines to make it clearer and more tidy as a whole illustration. At this point, I wasn’t too fussed about getting the line work right, but rather finding the right balance of the architectural element of the illustration itself. Where should the chimney go so it isn’t confused with the building in the background? Should there be a gap on the right of the house? How should the windows be arranged? and so on.

Once I had tested and drawn out the type and buildings by hand, I took a simple photo of them on my phone and chucked them into illustrator, image-traced them and tidied the lines up here and there to achieve these designs...

STAGE 4

Another one of Gjoko’s suggestions was to take a look at the logos for organisations that are in the same line of work as the Auckland City Mission. What we found was that a lot of them didn’t go for the hand-drawn illustrative feel we were trying to achieve with ours. And for the ones that did, they either used a sans-serif, or like the original Auckland City Mission logo a serif typeface with the hand-drawn illustration/mark. A frequently recurring element to these logos was the Catholic cross. It seemed to pop up in almost every logo we found in this line of work. We really felt the way Auckland City Mission had originally incorporated this into their logo was a clever reflection of their heritage/history, and were glad we decided not to do a complete overhaul of it.

The last image on the right, was the one Gjoko and our classmates pointed out was starting to veer onto the right track. It was starting to reflect that squared look of the buildings. What the logo in general needed now was some more polishing to align the two styles more closely with each other. Though we had now established the right path, there was a lot of fixing and touch ups needed to really bring it to a high standard. Small edits to the type and to the building illustrations would help to better tie it all together as shown below. 

Making the corners rounded, the type more squared, similar thickness of line (with slight variations), and making the negative/white space more of a prominent cross shape, were some of the main changes that came up. By this stage, I was thinking how much more do I really need to work on this. It was certainly taking a lot longer than I had anticipated, or scheduled in for in our project schedule. However, I soon understood with each change, how much better the logo became, and how important it was to continually refine and edit the logo stage by stage. It has certainly come a long way from the original.

STAGE 5

At this stage of the process, Maria stepped back in to help decide on the colour (which would be the base of the rest of the brand), and whether or not we were going to use a tagline. 

Having tested, as in the left-most image above, the most common taglines in different fonts under the logo. We soon established that having a tagline underneath the logo detracted from it. The logo at this point had become such a strong piece on its own, it didn’t need anything else extra around it. In fact, putting something around it, under it or beside it made it less powerful. Hence, we decided that the logo should always stand by itself. 

As for the colour, we did a print out of some possible blues, and after consulting Eden, and a few of our classmates, we felt this blue (right-most image above) was best suited. It was a happy, bright, cheerful blue we felt reflected the values of the organisation. Blue is also a colour commonly associated with aid/help (in a hospital sense). It also is a colour of trust and stability. So this was the obvious choice for the brand and logo. Additionally, blue (through in many different shades and tones) was originally used as the Auckland City Mission’s original logo.

STAGE 6

At this point of the process, we had already established a decent logo in its final stages. The only suggestions from Gjoko now were to test whether the choices for the windows (filled in or not) were the best/right way to go. So I did that. I tested it. But as I felt at the beginning, doing so would break our rule of have similar weights of line. And overall this exploration didn’t work, so we stuck with the original. It was a good point to bring up, and it certainly didn’t hurt to try and test it out. The thing to learn here is that no matter what you might think, always try it out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you will never know until its been tested and proven.

STAGE 7

The final editing/refining at this stage was the line work of the buildings. Having worked on it so much, I had tended to refine the buildings quite a lot to the point the lines were almost too perfect for the style we wanted to achieve. (It didn’t help that I used to do technical drawing in high school and could draw straight lines pretty well!) So I went back to the drawing board with this one, trying to get that slight ‘shakiness’ to the line that the original one had.

STAGE 8

And here’s our final logo! 

REFLECTION

It certainly took a lot of work. Constant exploration, refining, and polishing went into this. I certainly learnt a lot out of the whole process.

– It takes a lot more refining than you think to simply ‘polish up’ a logo.  – When doing hand written stuff, the key is to repeat it over and over, allow you hand to get used to the movements and gradually you will get better at it. – There are always a lot of small, minor changes to be made. And through minor and small, they make a big difference to the overall finish and feel of the logo. – A logo polish up or re-design should not be taken lightly. Often it is the strongest, most important part of the visual brand identity. Get this right, and everything else should fall into place.  – Start with the logo in a refresh/creation of a visual brand identity. It will define the rest of the brand. Essentially the logo is a compact little thing full of the values and beliefs of the company or organisation. – Pens make the whole process a lot more fun and exciting, (particularly if you’re a stationery geek). Buy a new pen to get yourself motivated! :P

Well this was an extra long post. It essentially recounts the entire logo polish up process. Including my learning and self–reflection.

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PROJECT SCHEDULE – UPDATED

I’ve just went and updated our project schedule based on the new deadline on the 4th of September. These changes have been highlighted in orange. The old schedule before this date, remains as it is in blue. According to the old schedule we should have been nearing our style guide completion, and have had completed our collateral by the end of this week. The reality was we were about a week behind our intended schedule – partly because we didn’t have enough time and I didn’t really know how much time to assign to different tasks.

But, thanks to the new deadline, we are now on schedule, and hopefully it stays that way. The progress we’ve made thus far is, by the new schedule, not so bad now that I look at it. Having gotten the logo mostly done, we’re now able to move onto the brand style guide. The logo went through numerous critiques and checks to polish it up (a process I’ll document shortly), and is partly the reason why I felt we were quite behind on schedule. Now, though, we’ve managed to get a start on the collateral, and it shouldn’t take as long once we start to establish a style that matches the one we’ve established in the logo.

One thing I’ve learnt having redone the schedule is that you can’t really assign one day for things. Having a range of time assigned to it and working towards the deadline of each job to be done seems more achievable, and is what I’ve changed in the re-scheduling. Hence you can see big blocks of time, rather than lots of small blocks all over the place. 

I’ve also updated the collateral list on our project schedule, which is now a confirmed more specific list of the collateral we’ll be designing models for, which will be used in the style guide.

Monday will be the first critique we have with the whole class. A great chance to show and get feedback on our NGO, and see where the rest of our class is up to. We’ve really only been seeing the progress of Jess and Kelly week by week. I actually kinda miss having the critiques. They’ve always been a great way to get a variety of opinions and feedback. To test whether things are working or not.

As for establishing contact with our NGO. We managed to get a reply! Yay! However, we were politely informed they were unable to assist us on this occasion – typically needing quite some time ahead (up to four weeks) to be able to accommodate time in their busy schedule. This would be something to learn from and keep in mind the next time I deal with a client in this way. Interviews often need to be planned well in advance, and it can often take a while for them to reply. Patience, and gentle persistence is the key. Don’t overdo it, but don’t expect them to follow up just because you’ve made contact once. Even though in the end we weren’t able to get that interview, I think its safe to say we did our best in our numerous attempts to establish contact and receive a reply.