ZENN Brand Guidelines
Brand Foundations
Brand Story
My brand story is almost like my life story but in terms of design and how I ended up becoming a designer, I have been fascinated by design for over half a decade and want to pursue design as a career. ZENN is a play on my own name Benn, I didn’t want to go the normal route of using my real name for my personal brand so I decided to put a play on words by changing one letter. My personal brand is all about minimalism and simplicity looking design as less visual and more a science, I also want my personal brand to portray my style of design in addition to elements of my own individual personality as much as possible.
Mission Statement
My mission is to establish myself as a trusted and knowledgable individual within the design industry, I aim to help develop and grow businesses through various design methodologies and practices to help them establish an emotional connection with their audience. As I am still a student and I need to think logically about employment I need to consider what companies I would like to work for, I have recently been interested in finance so I would like to aim towards a Fin-Tech company where I can design brands and applications for innovative tech and finance companies. Ultimately my mission is to create my own design studio and employ like-minded creatives and designers to work on projects on an international scale in addition to creating various other brands in different skillsets.
Core Values
- Professionalism
- Accountability
- Creativity
- Multi-Disciplined
Tone Of Voice
The tone of voice for my personal brand should remain professional as much as possible, when meeting with potential clients and/or businesses I want to be perceived as professional and knowledgable not just in design but in life in general. I would like to show my personality as much as possible throughout my personal brand but professionalism should be the main priority when it comes to speaking with others.
Wordmark & Logomark
Wordmark
For the wordmark of my personal brand I really want to play into the idea of minimalism and simplicity, after my researching into minimalism and how they used colour I noticed their use of typography too. They tend to use sans-serif typefaces that are quite thin and futuristic in their characteristics, considering the style of my personal brands logo mark I don’t think the constrasting weights will help my brand identity. Instead I wanted to draw some influence from the International Typographic Style and Modern Brutalist design, the typeface that I thought worked best for my personal brand was Hanson Bold.
There was some basic criteria I was looking for when it came to choosing a typeface, I have listed these below:
- Sans-serif Typeface
- Modern/Futuristic Characteristics
- Extended Letterform Width
Logomark
For my logomark I wanted to create something that worked with the characteristics of the brand I was aiming to create. Using what I have learned throughout my studies and the grid-based design influenced by my research into the International Typographic Style and the Swiss Design movement, I decided to try base my logo design around the golden ratio.
The golden ratio is commonly used throughout the design industry alongside other frameworks like Material Designs 8px grid system so demonstrating a throughout knowledge of this design principles will be a good way to attract potential employers and help me leave an impression when they connect with my personal brand.
Colours
Primary Colour Palette
For my personal brand primary colours I wanted to stick with the idea of minimalism and simplicity, after researching into minimalism and minimalist designs I noticed the colour white was used along with a greyscale colour theme so I decided to carry this inspiration into me personal brand. I didn’t want to use pure black within my brand so I chose to use a dark grey colour instead, to add some form of depth to the colour palette I included a light grey colour. I wanted to keep the output of my brand in mind when it came to choosing my colour palette and as my brand will be mostly digital I wanted to consider web-safe colours and how colours will be displayed on a screen.
Secondary Colour Palette
My secondary colour palette for my personal brand is purely just a further development of my primary brand colours. As I wanted to stick with the monochromatic theme I introduced a secondary colour palette consisting of web-safe grey tones. These colours should be used as additional supporting colours to the primary colour palette or used to create extra depth in a project in terms of outlines and shadows but they should NEVER be used for the primary colours of the brand, like being used in the logo for example.
Accent Colour
I have considered using an accent colour throughout my personal brand but I came to the conclusion of keeping with the monochromatic colout theme I initall started with. As my favourite colour changes all the time I think sticking with the monochromatic theme will allow me to fully customise my personal brand and included additional colours when they are needed. Using a monochromatic colour palette will also allow me to keep my brand professional and minimal in addition to drawing focus to my design work where colour is used as it will stand out against the neutral background colours or the brand.
Typography
The typeface I chose for my personal brand was influenced by the wordmark idea I had came up with for ZENN. I decided to use the same typeface I used for my personal brands wordmark in order to keep the consistency throughout my brand. This typeface only has 1 free option available to if I aim to expand my personal brand I will need to consider paid options in addition to web-font licenses.
HANSON BOLD
Iconography
When icons are used throughout user-interfaces they should follow the visual identity of the brand as much as possible. As my brands identity is based around geometry and geometric shapes this should be carried through into the icon style chosen for the brand. Outline style icons should be used throughout the brand but solid and filled variations can be used to indicate active states within a product, like an active page on a website for example.
I would like to develop me own icon set for my personal brand but this is something I will start working on over the next couple of years while I finish my studies. Ultimately the main consideration when it comes to iconography is consistency, simplicity and minimalism. Colour should NOT be used and icons should stick with the primary colour palette of the brand.
Structure & Sizing
Sizing
The sizing throughout my brand is going to vary from project to project as I may be working with a specific set of brand guidelines that I need to follow. Overall I would like to keep my brand based around simplicity so I am going to choose to use the Material Design system as the foundation for my personal brand following the 8px gird system where possible. For sizing of typography type scales should be based around the golden ratio and/or the perfect fifth depending on the projects output. This is to ensure there is a definitive visual hierarchy between typographical content.
Spacing
The spacing of each element should follow a soft approach to the 8px gird system, componenet elements should be spaced in multiples of 8px to ensure the spacing of the design is consistent throughout. This would be the same with rounding corners for UI elements like buttons and cards. The Material Design grid system is only a foundational element to my personal brand but I aim to create my own variation of these guidelines in order to fully customise my personal brand.
Structure
As my brand is based around minimalism with influences from the Bauhaus, Internation Typographic Style and the Swiss Design movements I wanted to draw inspiration from these design styles for the structure of my personal brand. I have looked into a lot of grid systems over the past few years but the one that I think would work best with my brand would be a modular grid system that uses rows and columns to create layouts and structure.
The golden canon grid system is something I have had great interest in so I would like to include this in some areas of my personal brand where a more dynamic layout is required, this grid system shares some similarities to modular design but focuses more on responsive grid design.
I have included to grid systems I would like my personal brand to follow below:
- Material Design 8px Grid System
- Modular Grid System
- Golden Canon Grid System
Imagery & Illustrations
Imagery
I want to try and keep the imagery used in my brand to a minimum but if images are used throughout the brand they must adhere to the the minimilistic approach my personal branding is taking. The main for of imagery used throughout my brand is going to be mock-ups and other methods of displaying my work to potential clients, when using mockups you should refrain from using colour as much as possible and stick with the greyscale colour theme. Both light and dark versions should be exported.
I have included a list of considerations for imagery throughout my personal brand below:
- DO NOT use stock photography!
- Images must be coverted in a monochormatic colour theme to fit with the brand colour palette and the brands minimalist characteristics
- Convert design mock-ups to greyscale to keep the consistency of the brand
Illustrations
If illustrations are used in various parts of the brand like iconography and other elements that help visualise content they should follow the same principles and characteristics of the brands sizing and structure focusing on golden ratio principles and the Material Design grid system. If icon illustrations are used they should use minimal colour to fit with the brand colour palette but colour can be used in order to make the illustration visually appealing, icon illustrations should also follow the same rules as iconography by using line-art style illustrations. Where possible these illustrations should be custom made to suit the project they are being created for but stock illustrations are acceptable – consider they may need tweaking to ensure they fit with the brand.
Brand Application & Mock-ups
Design mock-ups are going to be one of the most used forms of imagery when it comes to my personal brand as I will be using these to present my work to potential employers. As I want to specialise in 4 areas in branding and business development I need to consider how I will be presenting these projects. As I will be placing a focus on digital products and UI design I will need to use mobile application and website mock-ups to display my work in a realistic way. I will also be displaying branding projects I have worked on, as branding has a wide variety of touchpoint options I will need to consider how to keep these consistent with my personal brand.
I have included a list of considerations for design mock-ups in my personal brand:
- Clay device mock-ups should be used to work with the idea of minimalism
- Clay device mock-ups should be exported with and without a background
- Other mock-up designs will need alteration to fit with the greyscale colour palette of the brand.
- No colour should be used throughout the mock-up to draw attention to the work