IXD301 Elements Project – Branding, Type and Colour

In this post I will be considering the visual aspects of branding for my elements project.

Logo

Research

For research on logo design I looked at a book I got last year, “Designing Brand Identity” book by Alina Wheeler, that has some great explanations and examples of the different types of brand marks.

Inspiration

For inspiration I looked for examples of interesting logo design for games on dribble and Pinterest.

Sketches

Here is the idea I came up with in my sketch book. I settled on the name “Elements Unpacked” for the app so I though it would be perfect to have the logo be a box with the elements peeking out.

Digitising

Then after sketching, along with figuring out my type and colours I was able to digitise my Design…

Type

Research

I first did some research into the necessary considerations you must think about when choosing the right type for kids.

Here are some resources I found on the subject…

The main idea is that for little kids is too make sure type throughout is consistent, the proportions of the font is really important and avoid using two storied fonts as well as very stylised ones. For younger kids you shouldn’t use condensed fonts or ones where the counters aren’t round but for my target users ie. kids 8-12, I can get away with it since a lot of the books they would read have more condensed type.

I also read this book by Ellen Lupton which has pretty much everything you would need to consider about type so I learned a lot and I’m very glad I bought it.

 

Inspiration

I also looked at my cool typography Pinterest board as I find it always helps me to think more creatively when it comes to implementing typography.

My Choices

After testing searching on a bunch of different foundries snd experimenting to see what fit, I settled on a type call Scribble Note on font space for my logo and possibly some headers throughout the app. I wanted it to look a bit sketchy like it was had written onto the box and I think it looks really good.

For the rest of the type on my screens I settled on Futura as the best option. Since my target audience isn’t super little kids, I can avail of the condense font wait for the little bit of body copy as 8-12 year olds wouldn’t struggle with reading it and it allows me to add in more content.

 

Colour

For my app I really want the colours to give a soft, happy, stress free feel to the kids that use it. Thats why I thought immediately about using bright pastel colours.

Research

For research I looked online to try and find out what is necessary to consider when picking colours for a product aimed at kids.

Here are some sources I found on the topic….

I also did a wee bit of revising colour theory in relation to design.

Here are some sources I looked at…

Inspiration

Pinterest

For inspiration for my colour palette I took to a Pinterest board I put together of different palette ideas as well as my illustration board since there are loads of pieces with really great colours.

From there I found pieces with colours i really liked and thought about how they would fit my app really well if I made the colours lighter to fit the pastel vibe I was going for.

 Matt Hollingsworth’s Colouring for Hawkeye 2012

Recently I started reading the  2012 Matt Fraction and David Aja run of Hawkeye to prepare for the new Disney plus show. It’s an amazing book both the work of Fraction and Aja are amazing but I what stood out to me is the the work done by Colourist Matt Hollingsworth. In I think it was the second volume there were some pages included of him just talking about his process that I found really fascinating. He talks about minimalism and limiting his palette for each page but he uses palettes that suit what happening on the page. On paper it probably sounds weird but it works so well. Basically it’s got me thinking of using a limited palette for each aspect of my design but maybe with variations of the colours or outlines I use for the different elements like ui and backgrounds and such.

 

It’s a really good run everyone should read.

My Colour Palette

Here is the colour palette I have settled on for my brand.

These are the colours that will feature on my logo and launch screen background but also through out my screens. I will probably be adding some extra colours to the mix in my item illustrations but they will fit in with this palette I assure you of that.

 

Launch Screen

Now that I have considered the branding of my app I decided to go ahead and design a launch screen for the app to showcase it. I decided to have in the background outlines of the elements in a gradient of the pastel colours. I love this idea and think it’s quite iridescent looking

Sketches

Digitised

 

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