Looking back at the whole process of creating my personal identity for this Professional Practice unit, I have definitely gone through all the motions of compiling an identity. It feels like it has been a really long unit, but it also flew by.
I wasn’t really sure how to start at the beginning, but small doodles turned into full-fledged ideas and then designs, but three-quarters way through the project I scrapped my original idea and developed something new that better suited my design identity. I knew I wanted to use yellow in my identity, others blatantly associate it with me, and it’s such a lovely, happy colour that isn’t used that much in design so I knew that using it would set me apart. In the end, my colour scheme wasn’t just yellow, and features the primary colours, colours I always use not only in design but in real life, very representative!
The business card was the piece I worked on the most, as it looks so simple but was the hardest to crack. I was so set on creating a logo that I started to lose the essence of playfulness in my identity. I did really like the logo, it was something I had developed for a really long time, and it was a successful piece of design in its own right, but it wasn’t suited for my identity at this current stage.
Designing the C.V also proved to be a challenge, something that seems so simple was actually really hard to get right. I spent ages trying to figure out a workable layout, whilst also achieving the right amount of text for the C.V to actually work as intended. I went through a lot of drafts and changes, but in the end, I settled on a simple design. I’m not completely happy with my C.V, but I feel like I should develop it further in the future after some professional experience with the current copy.
The website was probably the most daunting aspect of the brief to tackle. I have never really ventured into web design before, apart from working my way through tumblr and various blogging platforms previously. I started to create the website on Muse, as I started out relatively confidently, but the more I worked on it, the more frustrated I became. I knew I wasn’t going to create a beautiful website this way, especially it being my first try with limited knowledge. The images in my head weren’t being translated, so I decided to use Wordpress as my creative platform. The website is simple in use, there are 4 pages and my contact information is constantly at the bottom of the site, very easy to access. But the overall aesthetic of the website is something I’m really proud of. The colour of my identity really helps bring the website to life, everywhere you look there is guaranteed to be colour. I’m sure that in future I would eventually develop my website further, learn how to code confidently and perhaps tweak my identity to suit my chosen practice, but I am happy with where it is now.
The portfolio was probably the easiest thing to bring together, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have my fair share of edits. Figuring out a layout and line length was a hurdle I had to get over, but after figuring out a simple system and putting my work it, it made me feel better about what I have created over the past few years, and it was rewarding to see it in a polished, professional context.
Overall, this was been an interesting unit. A competition brief coupled with a personal project was different and brought me new challenges and pushed me to work differently. I am now confident with branding and I am looking forward to work more hands-on in the future.
