Personal Branding
Consistent branding is essential for a brand because it helps to establish a strong and recognizable brand identity, which is crucial for building brand awareness and loyalty. A consistent brand image helps establish a professional and cohesive image for the brand. In this I was task with creating custom branding for myself, that would look professional and showcase myself as a designer and a person.
Research
Branding must be consistent across all platforms making research before starting a very crucial step. It is also something that cannot be changed often as once it is established customers and individuals will associate certain designs and colors with that brand and if it is frequently changing, they will not be as easily recognizable.
Creating a Logo
The first step in any branding is creating a logo. A logo is how a brand will be easily recognizable from just a quick image.
I first started by creating many sketches of potential logo ideas. Options ranging from including my full name, initials, and variations of that. I want a clean and professional looking logo that included timeless typefaces, that way I could continue to use these as I grow as a designer.
After creating sketches, it was time to vectorize them in Illustrator and narrow down my options. I went with this rectangular logo to choose to move forward with. However the typeface was not working, and it needed a color element to brighten it up.
Elevating a Basic Logo with Colors and Typefaces
Type Studies are key when creating a logo. The logo should be easy to read and clean looking. When first creating this logo I started with a serif font, and realized is was not as easy to read as I would like it to be. So I changed it so a serif font, that created that clean look I was going for.
Color Studies are very important because you want to make sure the colors you use in your branding go well together and are consistent with the type of image you want to portray. I wanted to be able to show my individual style through the colors I used in my logo.
I research some different color palettes and established what colors I liked, then took to testing them out with my logo. I knew I wanted to used a combination of a warm and cool toned color, so playing around with different combinations of blues, greens, mixed with yellows, and oranges is where I started.
Brand Board
After finalizing a logo it is time to create a brand board. A brand board serves as a guideline showing colors, typefaces, and patterns that will be used as well as alternative logos.
Ultimately I chose to create my logo using a slate blue, with a light peachy orange to compliment it. Alternate logos include a stacked design, with my full name as well as a horizontal and vertical logo using just initials for times when a smaller logo is needed.
The brand board includes which type faces would be used for headings and body copy text, as well as patterns that are used throughout my business systems.
