11/Final Project Brand Style Guide
For my final project, I went with option 1 on creating a brand guide for myself.
From the beginning, I knew I wanted to include a rabbit in my logo as it is not only my zodiac animal, I have similar traits of being sensitive and cautious as well. I had explored 3 different icons using 3 different colour schemes that I liked and tried to include a rabbit in them.
Week 9 Critique
During the first critique, many felt that the third icon with my name incorporated with a rabbit’s head suited me the most, but it was not obvious that the logo was of a rabbit’s head. Some felt that the head looked like the Playboy Bunny while others thought it looked like a fish’s head. Based on these comments, I had changed my icon to be a line drawing of a rabbit instead of just having the rabbit’s head to make it more explicit that it is a rabbit.
Another comment I received was that the colour scheme for my selected logo was too dull as it was just a black, white, and grey colour scheme. When I first started the assignment, I had separated my liking of pastel and dark colours and incorporated them in different icons. However, since this is meant to be an icon for myself, I felt that I should incorporate my liking of both pastel and dark colours into one icon, hence I changed my colour scheme to a light pastel blue with a dark grey. I felt that this colour palette was something that really suited me and fit my image.
Week 13 Critique
For this critique, some of the comments I received were that my resume was too dull and that the size of my text in both my name card and resume were inappropriate.
After the critique I had changed my resume and added more colour, tightened the sizing of my fonts, and made it less wordy. The first resume was very cluttered and had too many words which were packed tightly together, causing it to be unsightly and made it difficult for one to read.
Firstly, in my final submission I added icons to represent my software skills instead of having them as text. To show my degree of skill with each software, I enclosed a ring around each icon and the blue colour of the ring represents my level of skill. I had got the icons online and the icons for Microsoft software was too bright, thus I added a grey circle which was set to an opacity of 40% to dim the entire icon to better match my resume.
Secondly, I had enclosed and sectioned off each point of my resume (e.g. Personal Statement, Experience). I felt that this had greatly tidied up my resume as each section is clearly separated and I had better control of spacing throughout the entire resume. I used different colours as a background for each section as I felt that having two colours adds another layer to the resume instead of just having one colour as a background. The background colours are light, to ensure enough contrast between that and the text so that it is easily readable.
Next, I shortened the descriptions in my resume and spaced them out more to make it less cluttered. To help with visualisation, I made a small timeline for my experience and education section, with the most current information placed on top.
Lastly, for my name card I had shrank the size of my sub-headers and added a signature like font, Mina. During the critique I mentioned that I wanted to do something with the blank space on the right side of my name card and someone had suggested to include a cursive font since my name on my logo is cursive. Thus, I added this signature and rotated it so that it nicely fills up the side of my name card.
General Changes
I had made some other changes as well after I had looked through my brand guide. Firstly, I felt that the original black of the fonts was too dark and sharp for my resume, thus I had changed it to the dark grey colour that was in my colour palette. I was happy with this change as I felt that it had tightened the entire brand guide and since dark grey is visible against a light background, the visibility of my guide was not compromised either.
Next, I added another page which just shows my logo and provided a brief description of my logo along with a short sentence on its uses. Since the colour of my logo is light, it can only be displayed on a dark background to ensure that the logo can be seen.
Lastly, I made my colour guide and typography more interesting to look at. Previously, I had just placed the colours along with their RGB colour codes and the fonts are haphazardly placed in the typography page. In my final submission, I used a table to organise the details of my colour palette and included the Hex and CMYK colour codes as well. In the typography page, I used different background colours to segregate the different fonts used. Under each coloured block, I would place all the fonts of that font family inside it, for example since I used Jubliat Book and Light, they would be placed in the same section since they are of the same family.
Throughout this project, I had to be organised with my layers and character styles. Especially with my logo being the same line drawing 3 times set in different stroke sizes and colours, I had to be careful to group the correct items together if not I would end up with an oddly coloured or disjointed rabbit. To help me keep track of fonts, I had added the names and pt of each font in the name so that I knew what I was using.
















