Creating A Logomark
I have spent a lot of time thinking about my personal brand identity and how I want to represent myself in the design industry, even before I start studying at Ulster University, so I found this project extremely difficult for a couple of reasons, the first being I’m unsure on what name I want to be referred to as either my real name or an alias, the second reason is I find it really hard to look into myself and who I am as a person which is what this project was essentially asking me to do. Before I start designing my personal brands identity I need to decide on what name I want to be referred to as, this could either be my real name or a made up alias. Personally I don’t like my name as I plan on changing my last name to my mothers second name due to family issues and I feel like Benn Cox sounds absolutely awful and is not memorable what so ever, this led me to lean more towards using an alias for my personal brand instead. I had initially thought of setting up a design agency before I started my design journey, this is still one of the main goals of mine throughout my career, this was going to be called Zenn Media or something in relation to interactive media and graphic design. This gave me the idea of using ZENN as my personal brand name instead as this is a play on my first name and it has some ring to it which makes it more memorable than my real name, personally I feel like the double N is a great addition to making the name more unique and individual.
ZENN Designs
Logomark or Monogram?
We were asked at the start of this project to consider which option would be best to use for our personal brand, a logomark/pictorial logo or a monogram style logo, this question was difficult as I didn’t know exactly what I wanted my personal brand to be so I couldn’t fully answer the question. After consider my options for personal brand names I think a logomark would be better suited for this project as the brand name is only one word, monogram logos are good for brands that represent names as they often feature the initials of that person, this is usually seen in clothing brands and other fashion brands where the designer names is usually the name of the brand like Louis Vuitton for example. I want to explore all options when it comes to sketching ideas for my personal brand identity but I need to define my brands personality and how I want to be presented when it comes to working with clients and businesses within the design industry.
Which Will You Choose… Logomark or Monogram?
My final answer and reasoning to the question above is… Im opting to use a logomark logo as opposed to a monogram as I feel like this is a better fit for my brand name as I am using an alias as opposed to my real name, I also think that using a logomark as my brand identity will give me more creative freedom when it comes to idea generation and development as a monogram will usually feature typography. Another reason I am choosing to use a logomark instead of a monogram is the fact that I plan to use a grid-based design system throughout my brand as I want to incorporate the International Typographic Style and Swiss Design into my design style as this is something I am heavily influenced by, having a logomark will allow me to incorporate this into my personal brand identity.
Project Research
Brand Personality
As this is a personal brand project and is something we will be using to start our careers within the design industry I want it to represent me and my personality in every single way including colour, tone of voice, design style, everything… I find it really hard to sit down and critique myself, probably because I constantly need to do on the go and doing something to keep me occupied, but that being said I can take criticism – in fact I like a bit of constructive criticism from time to time.
While I was thinking about my personal brand and what I want to represent myself as I thought about what I actually wanted to have as my personal brand, in terms of products and services, do I want to become an illustrator, a web developer or a graphic designer? I have always had a fascination with picking up new hobbies here and there so I have picked up a few skills over that past decade since I left school in areas of music, design, business, finance and marketing. Running my own music brand has helped me learn skills like marketing, social media management, graphic design, branding, networking and business so I want to try and consider skills like this to include in my personal brand. I have included a small list of ideas below that I would be interested in including in my personal brand:
- Brand Identity/Brand Development
- Graphic Design
- Web Design
- Web/App Development
- Social Media Management
- Digital Marketing
- UI/UX Design
- Sound Design
- Music Production
At the moment I am really reaching into to my emo roots way back in my skater days which is something I would like to try and incorporate into my personal brand as I think this is a huge part of my personality and who I am today, this could be from various sources of inspiration like design, music and even fashion or public figures. Personally I’m a huge music fan and have worked with music for almost 10 years now so drawing inspiration from bands I used to listen to when I was younger like Blink 182, Green Day, Bring Me The Horizon and Paramore in addition to the more modern styles of music I listen to and create is a must. As I want to keep my brand professional in some sense I think this will influence the style of design and colour palette as opposed to the brands actual meaning. For my tone of voice I would prefer to keep it professional but casual where possible, as I have done some work for friends before and I get close with the people I work with I am used to having a friendly, no-filter conversation as if we are friends rather than two people just doing business together, obviously this is not possible at first and would be more for regular clients so the initial meeting should seem professional, easy going and open-minded – I think this is a good representation of who I am and how I would usually come across as a person.
Initially I liked this idea but the more I researched into it in terms of design the more I realised I would clash with other elements I was trying to fit into my personal brands personality, I really want my brand to be about minimalism and simplicity as the word Zen is meant to be associated with peace and tranquillity which I think perfectly suits a clean, minimalistic style. Pop punk style designs are more anarchist and irrational which is the exact opposite of what minimalism and simplicity should represent. I think choosing minimalism for this project is a better option but I want to include this anarchist style design in another project as I am thinking about starting up an independent clothing brand as a method to display my designs.
Design Style Research
In terms of design style I think I know what I like, whenever I am scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest I have noticed that some design styles seem to catch my eye and draw my attention. I am a huge fan of minimalism and simplistic design especially in UI/UX design so this I definitely something I want to incorporate into my design style. After researching into Off White and Virgil Abloh I found out that I was a huge fan of Deconstructivism and the deconstructivist movement, I love how the Off White x Nike trainer collection still has that modern look but also having a rugged and worn personality to it. After researching into the history of design last semester and looking into the Bauhaus Design movement and the Swiss Design era I found that I became really passionate about typography, colour and grid systems, their use of sans-serif typeface is something I am a huge fan of so I will be trying to include that into my personal brand. After researching into the International Typographic Style and the Swiss Design movement I loved how the designers from that time period used grid systems to help create interesting layouts and compositions for their designs, a lot fo the designers I follow use grid systems and modular design through their work so this is also something I plan on incorporating into my personal brand.
I have included some different design styles I would like to incorporate into my personal brand identity.
Initial Sketching & Idea Generation
When I started sketching I wanted to explore every option possible to see what would work best for my personal brand, considering my personal brands alias I wanted to experiment with a monogram of the letter Z to see what ideas came to mind, as I wanted to draw inspiration from the Swiss Design era and their use of grid systems I wanted to try and keep my logo based on a grid. I love line style icons and illustrations so this gave me this idea of trying to create a line style letter mark or monogram as the logo for my personal brand, I decided to create a number of variations of the letter Z to see what sort of shapes and patterns I could come up with. Overall I really liked these logo ideas and I feel like the really suit the minimalistic influence my brand style is aiming for but I thought its a bit too simple and basic in terms of where I can take the logo from here, another consideration is if the logo is being displayed at a larger size it might look too minimalistic and not very noticeable to the viewer. It was good to explore these ideas but I don’t think I will be taking them any further unless I plan to add an additional element to my personal brand later on down the line.
Idea Development
Considering the inspiration from Swiss Design and The Bauhaus Movement I wanted to experiment with the use of basic geometric shapes as this was something commonly used throughout these design eras. One inspiration for this idea was the Mentimeter logo that was included in one of our lectures in our IXD103 Exploring Identity module, the way they used geometric shapes and grids to create a graphic style icon logo really interested me. I started to sketch out some different ideas on how I could break down the letterforms of the word ZENN and turn them into basic shapes, while I was sketching these ideas I felt like once I got one idea out of my head another one came to mind, I tried experimenting with the letter B to see what came to mind and see how it could be broken down into basic shapes just incase I’m able to incorporate that into my design.
I have included some of my sketches below to give you an idea on what direction I am planning on taking this project.
Final Sketches
The idea I liked the most from my idea generation and sketching process was the deconstructed letterforms into basic geometric shapes, I felt like this hit a lot of the criteria I had thought about when it came to the personality of my brand in terms of design inspirations and the style of my brand. When I had the idea of segmenting the centre section of the logo it gave me the idea of focusing on 4 areas of interactive media and digital design, personally I want to brand myself as a multi-disciplinary designer but having four areas in which I specialise in could be a good idea. I have included a list of these 4 services I would like to specialise in below:
- Brand Identity & Brand Development
- Graphic Design
- Digital Marketing
- UI/UX Design & Web Development
The reason I want to specialise in these areas of interactive design and digital media is purely down to business development, I want to essentially be a brand development guru focusing of brand identity, brand development and brand strategy helping new and existing companies establish a name for themselves. Including services like graphic design, digital market, UI/UX Design and web development will be useful as we would be able to create everything a brand needs in house without them reaching out to other designers.
I have included my final sketches below to illustrate where my personal brand identity is going and how my research influenced the design of my logo.
Final Logo Design
Final Logo
When I started designing my logo in Affinity Designer I wanted to consider the Swiss Design inspiration I wanted to incorporate into my personal brand, when I was designing the initial variations of the logo I noticed that the design worked nicely with the values of the golden ratio – that being 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and 55. This gave me the idea of combining a basic pixel grid with a grid based on the golden ratio squares to base my design off. I found that because my logo was based on geometric shapes I could use the pen tool to create custom shapes based on the pixel grid, this also helped to keep the spacing of the logo design consistent.
I wanted to experiment with a few different variations of the logo, the first being the original logomark, the second being a minimalistic version of the logomark and the third being a variation with typography. This was just an experiment to see how the logo could be developed further and see what options I would have for the logo to be displayed on various mediums and outlets, I really like the minimalistic version of the logo as it reminds of an icon used in user interfaces and it has a minimalistic feel to it but I feel like the logo with typography is a little too much. The final two I would choose for my personal brand would be the original logomark and the minimalistic version of the logomark as I feel they fit the brands minimalistic personality.
I have included my final logo idea for my personal branding project below to demonstrate how my research and idea generation influenced my final design.
