IXD103 – Week One
For our first week in IXD 103 we began by looking at the difference between word marks, Monograms and Logomarks. This was a very useful introduction as it gave me an insight into the basics of brand identity, showing how important these aspects are.
We then looked into what a brand actually is, getting feedback from the whole class allowing everyone to get a wide viewpoint of what a brand is. From what I learned to me a brand is an intangible marketing or business concept that helps people identify a company, product, or individual. We learned how people often confuse brands with things like logos, slogans, or other recognisable marks, which are marketing tools that help promote goods and services.
When starting a brand we were shown that it is always substance over style, making sure that research is there first and most important step, working out what our brand is and who it will be speaking to.
We were set our first task, to creating a brand for a modern bank, aimed at 16-25-year-old approximately. After hearing about methods such as online surveys and the KJ method I decided to go out and visit different banks around the city to collect leaflets and see flyers and poster about what they offer their customers. This was a helpful experience as it allowed me to see the demographic of in brach bank meetings being those from the older generation. After heading back to the studio I decided to see what people on social media and sites like trust pilot think about certain established branches and it allowed me to formulate some survey questions that I gave to my roommate to answer to help me create a user persona.
Using Figma I created a user persona basing it off my roommates living situation, work life and the answers he gave me from my survey. This user persona allowed me to see a brief overview of a small percentage of my target audience, and I can use the template I created in Figma to create more user personas in the future.
After having a class review of each other’s user personas, which I found useful as I got to see other peoples creative thinking and how they think it should be laid out. To finish off the class we looked at how important words and language are to a brand and it showed me how when creating my own brand the first step I should take is brainstorm words that I feel are relevant to it. A brand hould have 5 Key values, values that important to your demographic and target audience.
