When I was first assigned Greenpeace for my iconic brand, I was unsure if this brand would excite me enough to sustain my interest during the researching phase. I was quickly proven wrong as I found myself staying up late reading articles on the Greenpeace international website about all their campaigns and what they are trying to do. Over the course of this assignment, I found myself getting easily distracted with the actual brand missions and must have signed about 20 petitions but I was happy to have an interest in what I was studying.
I tried to keep my writing ‘on brand’ by using similar writing style to the international website, they are a brand that likes to tell stories rather than be corporate, even when it comes to the serious matters. I feel I’ve learnt a great deal over the course of this brief, not only about Greenpeace but about the design process and things I personally need to work on to be more successful in future. This assignment was a great reminder that I need to manage my time better so if anything goes wrong ( which is almost inevitable) I have enough time to fix it without causing myself panic.
I feel like this brief really reinforced what we learnt in the first assignment about what defines a brand. An iconic brand should go beyond their products or services and have an impact on your way of thinking and how you feel. Greenpeace is a brand that strives to inspire people around the world to take action, not just support others that already do so.
Of course there are a few things I would change given the chance but I think that’s the curse of having time to reflect, there will always be something you would do differently if you had more time or a bigger budget etc. If I could change a few things they would be the body text font size, just a little bit smaller I think would have looked much nicer. I thought it would look okay because on screen it looked more in proportion but thats my own fault for not doing a final test print myself after all the problems I had the day before. I would have also liked to add a small quote or statement on the back cover just to give it some visual interest and act as a kind of summary but I am not unhappy with how it turned out without it. Also, I learnt that its important to give yourself more time than you need to get printing and binding sorted as once you hand your files over, it’s out of your control how long that process takes.
Overall I really did enjoy this assignment and I am proud of the work I put out. I feel as though I learnt a lot about my brand and the idea of iconic brands in general. I almost feel like the brand wasn’t randomly chosen but was selected for me. This project had an effect on my personal life as I have adopted some of the methods Greenpeace suggests to reduce your environmental impact which is something I had not anticipated, but their facts and writings on various issues threatening the planet took me by surprise.
