WELCOME
This morning we’ll be going over this quarter’s schedule, final deliverables, and the final presentation template. Afterward, there will be a lecture introducing the brand process, how a brand is developed, how to begin a mission statement, and an introduction to tonal territories.
— Live Class Recording
In small client groups, you will be using Miro boards to work on two class exercises — Brand Character Traits and The beginning of your (What your company does) Brand Mission Statement:
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— Brand Character Exercise (pdf)
— Thinkmap’s Visual Thesaurus (website)
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— Brand Purpose a.k.a The beginning of your Mission Statement (pdf)
— (5.26 min) Design Studio: Airbnb Redesign (videos)
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Part 1: Finish up your 3 character traits & the beginning portion of your mission statement from class — upload the character traits and mission to Google Slides.
Part 2: Working as individual designers or in your teams of 2: build your tonal territories.
Use the tagged images from your (Who am I?) Brand Character Exercise and complement those images with an image search for your brand.
Start to find images (both related and not related to your brand’s industry) which fit the 3 character traits of your company. At this stage you do not need to be too precious about finding the perfect image. This week it is primarily about fleshing out/finding the right visual tone for each character trait.
Do the same process for color(s), typefaces, patterns/textures/glyphs/lines for your tonal territories. (Use the supporting words and phrases from your in-class sprint and set them in a typeface and/or color that tonally reflects the umbrella word).
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— Day & Link Coming
— Day & Link Coming
Letter Shaping Game
The Bézier Game
Plotting Vector Points with Jessica Hische
Letter Building: Scaling & Shaping
Horizontal & Vertical Bézier Handles
Lettering Tutorial
Vector Lettering Techniques
Today we’ll be going over brand positioning & brand promise.
In small client groups, you will be using Miro boards to work on two class exercises — Brand Positioning and Brand Promise:
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— Mission Statement Sample (pdf)
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Part 1: Finish your brand positioning, key benefit and brand promise from class. Include which territory your client primarily inhabits.
You can either keep all of the information separate (the who, what, & why) and add this information to Google Slides as is OR you can collapse the this information into a more concisely written Mission statement. The choice is up to you.
Part 2: Refine and finish your tonal territories. Make sure you showcase photography, color pallettes, typeface(s), line quality/glyphs styles (e.g. bars, frames, rules, dingbats, icons), textures & patterns.
Part 3: Log your hours: Click here and save your own copy of this time log sheet:
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— Day & Link Coming
— Day & Link Coming
In class we will be discussing the difference between inspiration moodboards and concept boards. As a class, we will review / deconstruct sample tonal territorries and run through the process to generate concepts, a library of assets, and a visual approach for an entire brand. This exercise will help you to create your own concept board with visual styles / applications for your client’s brand.
— Moodboard Types.pdf, Student Samples.pdf, Refining your Concept Board.pdf
— Live Class Recording
Part 1: If needed, make the final revisions to your brand character & mission/purpose, your brand promise & brand positioning statements. Upload it to the Google Slides links below.
Part 2: Create one work-in-progress concept mood board direction from your tonal territories (photos, colors & type)
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— Day & Link Coming
— Day & Link Coming
This week we’ll talk about the different categories for trademarks. As a class we will take a sample trademark and deconstruct the mark using everything we know from design history influences & gestalt principles to use of typography and color theory. Then we’ll use a couple of design techniques to generate inital marks, wordmarks, emblems, pictorial marks, & abstract marks.
Today you will be in break out groups of 3. You will be using timeboxing to brainstorm trademarks and practice iterating.
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— Choose of one of these clients briefs.pdf
— (3 minute) Lynda.com: for iterating wordmarks
— (2.5 min) Iterating icons on Lynda.com
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Each member of the group sketches a brain dump for 30 minutes to explore options: one student focuses primarily on word marks & letter marks, one student focuses primarily on emblems & combination marks, one student focuses primarily on pictorial marks & abstract marks. After 30 minutes, take a picture of your sketches and upload to Google Slides.
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Then together in Miro, create a mind map & forced connections for 30 minutes to generate more potential ideas. Take a screen grab and upload it to Google Slides.
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As a team — use your creative brief to assist your choices / discussion, vet your mind map to find top 2 options to explore. Discuss ways each designer might be able to visualize these 2 ideas.
For the remaining 30 minutes, each designer will take the top 2 ideas from the mind mapping and forced connections, and create visuals for them. Take a picture of the new sketches and upload the image to Google Slides.
Each individual reviews all the sketches in Google Slides and marks the ones they think have potential. Then, as a team review the marked sketches together and pick your top 1 – 2 sketch ideas that you would like to push farther.
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— (14.51 min) Iteration Method Walk Through
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For the final 30 minutes create iterations using the Iteration Method in the video/PDF file above. At the end of your 30 minutes, upload all of your iterations. As a team, mark your top 3 final ones in Google Slides. At the beginning of next week's class we can take peeks at each others work on the Google Slide document and discuss how the process went for you & your team.
— Day & Link Coming
— Day & Link Coming
— (2.30 min) James Martin — Logo Life Episode 1
— (17.01 min) James Martin — Logo Life Epidsode 2: My logo process
— (13.58 min) James Martin — Logo Life Episode 3: Turning words into ideas
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Part 1: Either working solo or with your team member, generate at least 40 – 75 sketch ideas for your logo (40 – 50 ideas if you are working alone and 50 – 100 if you are working on a team).
Try using the 5 trademark categories and short, timed sprints to generate a variety of approaches to your trademark.
If you have a partner, trade your original sketches and iterate off of their ideas/sketches. (estimated time ~ 3 hour per person)
Part 2: Choose your top 1–3 trademark sketches you think have potential for your brand. Iterate on your design choice(s) using the method you practiced in class.
Part 3: Upload all of your sketches and your iteration sketches to Google Slides. These are works-in-progress to showcase ideas and get feeback. Don't strive for perfection, strive for clear direction. Place a mark near the ones you feel like have potential.
Part 4:
Log hours
Next week some alumni will be here. They have offered to do the first look at/review your work. They know everything will be in a rough draft phase.
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— Day & Link Coming
— Day & Link Coming
This week we’ll be meeting with alumni to review your work-in-progress. After lunch we’ll spend time generating your timelines for touchpoints / deliverables.
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Choose potential deliverables and create realistic timelines to achieve them. Don’t forget to include your style guide as a touch point / deliverable. Upload a link to your timeline and hour log to Google Slides.
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Do:
Part 1: Finish choosing your touchpoints / deliverables and your timeline. Upload links to your timeline for deliverables and your time log to Google Slides.
Part 2: Refine and finish your logo designs based off of alumni feedback. Make a vertically stacked version as well as a horizontal version of your chosen design. Scale your designs (both large and small) to see potential problems.
Part 3: Make final revisions to summer homework, if needed. Post final updates to Google Slides.
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— Day & Link Coming
— Day & Link Coming
This class will be devoted to the key components of a style guide. There will time in class for setting up your brand style guide in an InDesign document.
— Parts of a Style Guide & Sample Guide Books :: Student & Professional (pdf)
— Live Class Recording
— InDesign Style Guide Template for Blurb.com (indd file)
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Start pulling together the key components needed for your style guide. Set up your master pages in Indesign and begin filling in client history, brand purpose / mission, positioning & promise information into your guidebook.
— 2020 Rebranding Showcase from around the world
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Part 1:
Continue to add all pertinent information into your guidebook.
Part 2: Continue developing your brand according to your timeline.
How to Build a Brand Bible & Visual Style Guide (the basic elements in a guide book)
How to start your basic brand style guide (defining your colors and buffer space)
Samples of Brand Style Guides:
School Brand Style Guides:
University of California Berkeley
The New School (online and PDF available)
Seattle Central College Brand Guide (pdf)
Online guidebook assets:
Find guidelines & assets on the web
Historical style guides:
There are many ways to gain insights into your client’s brand and to help them establlish their brand character traits. Today we will be going over 2 more processes to help you when you are working with clients. (the first method to establish brand character traits was the brand image exercise we did from Week 1).
Check ins with Jill.
Peer-to-peer reviews.
Here are two other methods used by designers to establish character traits and find insights into a company’s brand:
You’ll be put in break out groups of 3. There will be a short 30 minute exercise where you will use your own brand deck on yourself. Find out who you think you are / are not as a designer. Share your top 3 – 4 "You are” character traits with your group of 3 to see if they resonate. Then take a stretch break.
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After your break you’ll come back to your break out room, and as group of 3, choose a brand together that you all know. Use the Google Slide Template below, make duplicate pages within the document for your group, and spend 30 minutes filling it out as a team for your chosen brand. Afterwards see if you come up with any insights / character traits about your chosen brand.
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Optional: Look in the Resources & Links tab to see some Seattle branding agencies.
Part 1: Continue developing your brand.
Part 2: Continue designing and revising your guide books.
Part 3: Revise and refine brand touch points.
We’ll spend the morning looking at Pantone books and working with color across media channels.
— (6.59 min) How to choose color and convert to Pantone colors in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop
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— How to show colors in the brand guide: Airbnb sample
— Live Class Recording
— Converting colors from one medium to another
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Identify your colors across media streams and add the information to your brand guidebooks.
— Color forecasting :: What is Pantone Color of the year?
— Pantone: Color Trend Forecasting
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Part 1: Continue developing your brand.
Part 2:Add your color breakdowns for media streams to your guidebooks. Continue designing and revising standards guide books and deliverables.
Sign-ups to meet with Jill.
Peer-to-peer reviews.
No Lectures Today
Check ins and Lab time
Part 1: Continue developing your brand.
Part 2: Continue designing and revising standards guide books and deliverables.
This week we’ll be meeting with alumni to review your work-in-progress.
No Lectures Today
Check ins with me after your alumni review. Lab time
Part 1: Continue developing your brand.
Part 2: Continue designing and revising standards guide books and deliverables.
There will be a brief discussion on your presentations: timing, content & deliverables.
Reflect on the quarter and the process & work you have done. Then develop an rough outline of what you would like to say for your final presentation.
— TBD Presentation order (pdf)
The first person / group within each client category will be discussing the client background research, audience, character, promise, positioning, & attributes. After the first person / group, everyone else in that category need not repeat this information.
You will have about 5 minutes for your presentation. When you present you will be focusing on your point-of-view for your client, your concept board, and your touch point deliverables.
Please fill out evaluations for Branding
Your Google Slides presentation
— TBD Presentation order (pdf)
The first person / group within each client category will be discussing the client background research, audience, character, promise, positioning, & attributes. After the first person / group, everyone else in that category need not repeat this information. You will have about 5 minutes for your presentation. When you present you will be focusing on your point-of-view for your client, your concept board, and your touch point deliverables.
Project Idea for Special Topics
Please fill out evaluations for Branding