Off The Press – Exploring Colour
Introduction
Since the start of 2022 I have been obsessed with the idea of creating a personal brand that incorporates everything I love and enjoy within interactive media and digital media as an industry, over the past few months I have been giving this idea some thought and I thought it would be a good idea to make a start on the overall idea using what I have learned throughout my IXD103 – Exploring Identity module. I love fashion design and streetwear design so this is something I would like to tailor my personal brand towards in addition to more digital mediums like UI/UX design and graphic design, this module has been really interesting so far and has really sparked a love for branding and brand development so this is also something I would like to tailor my personal brand towards.
NOTE: This is not my personal brand project that I will submit for my final project piece but this will be an additional brand that I might submit alongside my projects for the IXD103 – Exploring Identity module.
Thinking About Who I Am
My Personality
For some reason I found it extremely hard to think about who I currently am as a person and who I want to be in the future, when it comes to creating my personal brand I have had a number of different ideas over the past few years of designing and showing an interest in branding but I can never seem to think of something that works with my interests and passions as well as functioning as a professional brand, this its partly down to having a mix of interests as I enjoy music, design, sports and other activities. When I sat down with myself to ask who I wanted to be and how I wanted to be presented as a brand within design I realised that I want to be true to who I am, my personality, my style, my tone of voice, everything… I don’t want to be fake in any form. As a person I would say I am quite energetic, maybe too energetic at times but I think this should come through in my personal brand, I am also extremely into fashion design and trainers/shoes which I want to try an incorporate into my personal brand either through an apparel clothing line or designing for clothing brands and developing clothing brands. I would say I’m a very loyal and dedicated person when I set my mind to achieving something I give 110% to ensure I get as close to my goals as possible, that being said I am also a MASSIVE dreamer and optimist who is always looking at the bright side of life which I think should really come through in my personal brand. I would consider myself a very professional person when it comes to business and work related matters, when I’m off the clock I can be immature but overall I would class myself as having some form of professional image which I think should be the main focus of my personal brand.
Favourite Colour
Deciding on my favourite colour is like deciding what my favourite food is… absolutely impossible! As a designer I also have a HUGE love for colour so it was quite difficult trying to incorporate my favourite colour into my personal brand. When I sat down to think about what I currently like at this moment in time I realised that the colour orange kept popping up, when I’m shopping for new clothes or shoes I found myself stopping on items that has touches of orange throughout them. I love the colour red and after conducting research into colour theory and colour psychology I think the colour red is a close match to my personality, I also think the colour blue is a good match to my personality but I personally think that the colour blue is a little over used within the branding industry as a lot of brands use blue within their identity. With this in mind and having done research into colour theory the colour orange is a very close match and would be an analogous colour to the colour red, this would be a good idea for an analogous colour palette for my personal brand. In addition to this the colour blue would sit opposite to these colour on the colour wheel making the colour blue a complimentary colour, these colours could all be included and work well together in order to truly represent my individual personality throughout my personal brand.
Target Audience
For my personal brand I aim to be a multi-disciplinary designer with a primary focus on brand identity, graphic design and fashion design, ultimately my target audience is going to be a mixture of people ranging from businesses to individual clients and customers. Having such a broad target audience is actually going to be useful as I won’t need to think about it too much as long as the product and service appeals to the majority of people. My ideal client would be someone who is into fashion and streetwear, someone who loves visual design or a business who is looking for brand development. As I aim to make this a business I want to consider ways I could make a living, as I was to male clothing and fashion product I think it would be a good idea to include a digital store within my personal brand where people can purchase the product I design – this would be a good passive income stream with a small investment and high ROI. For active income I want to focus on brand identity and graphic design but also offer other interactive media services like web and app design, front-end development, graphic design, animation, sound design and music production services, this is a wide range of services and would appeal to a wide audience in both well established brands and start-up companies. This will allow me to work on a wide range of projects and work as a freelance designer but still have some form of income from my digital store.
Products & Services
I have thought about what products and services I would offer to my clients and customers and honestly there is a lot I want to do, as I want to place a focus on fashion I think it would make sense to sell the products I design for my brand as some form of income. I have also thought about selling digital assets for design like icons, typefaces, images, animations, textures and UI kits so I think this is something I would like to explore further down the line when it comes to developing my personal brand in the future.
I have included a list of product ideas for my personal brand below.
- UI Kits
- Icon Sets
- Illustrations
- Clothing/Apparel
- PNG Textures
- Photography Presets
- Social Media Templates
- Web Design Templates
- Pre-Built Websites/Mobile Apps
As I want to be recognised as a multi-disciplinary designer I need to ensure I offer a wide variety of services across the interactive media industry, as I studied interactive media I want to include some of the skills I learned from that course which included photography, videography, animation, web design, front-end development, graphic design, illustration as well as other skills. I also want include what I am learning in university at the moment and really refine my skills and focus on branding, graphic design and UI/UX design, I feel like this will be a wide variety of skills to offer clients and customers but it may be difficult creating a portfolio of work that has examples of all of these skills.
I have included a list of services for my personal brand below.
- UI/UX Design
- Social Media Marketing
- Front-End Development
- Photography
- Videography
- Animation
- 3D Modelling
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Brand Identity & Brand Development
- Music Production
- Sound Design
Considering Colour Theory & Colour Psychology
Linking Colour With My Personality
Considering the research I completed into basic colour theory and colour psychology in addition to considering my personality and how I want to be presented to the world I wanted to try and link my colour palette to aspects of my personality and interests. As I want to be presented as professional within the design industry I decided to start with a simple black and white colour palette as these colours are often used in modern professional brands like Apple for example, these colours on their own are a little boring but with a touch of colour I feel like they all work really well together in creating contrast.
As I really like the colour orange at the moment I want to try and incorporate that into my personal brand as some sort of accent colour, as I am a very energetic person I want to try and go for a vibrant orange colour that has a lot fo energy. This would be a great fit for my brand as it would be a good match to my personality in numerous ways, considering the colour psychology research I conducted this would also be a good match as the colour orange is usually associated with having the energy of the colour red and the happiness and joy of the colour yellow, the colour red represents my drive, passion and energy while the colour yellow represents my high spirits and optimism, when these colours are combined the make the colour orange. Considering my colour theory research I could also incorporate the colour blue into my colour palette to represent the trust and loyalty throughout my personality, this would be a really good complimentary colour to the colour orange and could really make for an effective colour palette for my personal brand.
I have included an idea of my personal brand colours below.
- Black (Primary Colour)
- White (Secondary Colour)
- Orange (Accent Colour)
- Blue (Complimentary Colour)
Brand Inspiration
Brand Inspiration & Favourite Brands
Before I start to develop my brand style I wanted to look at some brands that I love the style of as well have sharing the love of specific design styles. Some of these brands I like because they have elements of a specific design style I will be directing my personal work towards, other brand are inspiration for story and how they got to where they are today and some brands are included because I have found myself religiously purchasing their products and supporting their brand. I have included a lot of fashion brands as this will give me a good insight into how I should be designing my products in addition to how my products and service should be advertised, this will also give me a good insight into what sort of logo design is common across these brands to allow me some insight into how I could present my brand through a logomark or wordmark.
I have included a list of some brands I like below.
- Off-White
- Nike
- Vans
- Calvin Klein
- Gucci
- The North Face
- Studio Innate
- Apple
Final Conclusion
Primary Colour Palette
For my final colour palette I wanted to stick with three colours, one primary colour, one secondary colour and one accent colour to draw the users attention to certain elements or information. For my primary colour I will be using an extremely dark grey colour with the hex code of #010101, I didn’t want to use pure black as I feel like the dark grey balances better with the other two colours. For my secondary colour I will be using pure white with the hex code of #FFFFFF as this will allow for a great contrast against the dark grey colour I chose for my personal brand, I may add an addition tone of white that is slightly darker, like an off-white colour, but this will be at a later date if I feel like the brand would benefit from that. For my accent colour I wanted to choose a vibrant orange colour as a kind of spot colour for my personal brand, the orange I chose for this my personal brand has the hex code of #FF5A00.
Below is the generic HEX values of the primary brand colours I have chosen for my personal brand.
- Graphite Black (#010101)
- Pure White (#FFFFFF)
- Orange (#FF5A00)
I have included an image of my personal brand colour below to demonstrate how the work alongside each other.
Supporting Colour Palette
I wanted to create additional palettes based around the basic colour theory I had learned throughout or module lectures, I want to try and create an addition analogous colour palette, complimentary colour palette and a square colour palette to allow me to expand my brand further. For this I took my orange colour into Adobe Color and used their AI software to find colours that work well with the orange I had chosen, this is a good starting point for these additional palettes but they could do with some refinement later on when they’re in use to ensure they work well with the primary colours of my personal brand.
I have included screenshots of these additional colour palettes below.
