Creative Brand Strategy - Task 3

Creative Brand Strategy

10.10.2022-28.11.2022 (Week 7 - Week 14)

Hussain Waheedh (0344870)

Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Creative Brand Strategy - Task 3: Campaign  Branding

INSTRUCTIONS

TASK 2: IDEATION & DESIGN DIRECTION

TASK 3: CAMPAIGN BRANDING

For the final task we were instructed to execute the designs that we finalised to do on task 2. I was to come up with the designs for the brand identity, touchpoint and merchandise items.

BRAND IDENTITY

BRAND NAME: For the key message, I did some research and brainstorming. I had some rough ideas but wasn't sure. One of my classmates gave me the idea to use Ashley's Art world. I liked it and decided I'll go with it.

LOGO:

I had already planned to draw and design characters for the designs so it seemed natural to use Ashley's character drawing as the logo or at least part of it. So based on the visual reference from the moodpboard and some other visuals, I sketched a rough cartoonish portrait of Ashley on my sketchbook. I also sketched it with the brand name "Ashley's Art world" to come up with a good composition.

After doing some really rough sketches, I got some ideas and started illustrating Ashley's portrait on illustrator. Drawing on illustrator is always very difficult for me especially because of my Wacom which is a standard pen tablet with no screen. But I managed to get some decent outline that I liked.

I liked the character design so I used it to make the rest of the logo. I tested with multiple compositions and typefaces and below are some of the results

It was much later that I figured out that the outlines of the character were too thick and doesn't look very neat so I made the outlines much thinner.

I also used the colour palette from the ideation to fill up the colouring for the character and the typography.

CHARACTERS:

I used the same style as Ashley's character to illustrate Tom and Jerry. I went with a cuter and fun style of them enjoying/hanging around. I tried to give Tom a more mature and moody energy and jerry a more youthful and crazy fun energy.

TYPOGRAPHY:

For the typography, I experimented with a lot of typefaces to see if any of it goes well with the design. I decided to use Spicy Rice typeface for the headers and source sans typeface for the body. I used the header type as the logotype but Ms.Lilian suggested I use a different one because it blends with the headers. So after some experimentation I decided to use Chewy one as the logo font.

I designed two versions of the logo, one with Ashley and the brand name and other without Ashley. For the most part of the branding I used the logotype mark instead of the one with Ashley's character because all the designs already include characters and so having a character on the logo mark doesn't seem proportional or tidy.

TOUCHPOINTS

INTRODUCTION VIDEO:

Although the introduction video is ahead of others, I animated the video much later compared to the remaining touchpoint and merchandise. I used the characters from the other designs and illustrated more to animate the characters into making them do things on video. 

I used aftereffects and Illustrator to make the animation and used the typography from the logo.

WEBSITE:

For the website I first intended to design a landing page. I came up with two versions for the website and showed ms.Lillian. She said that the sections need to be more detailed and that a landing page might not contain enough space for that amount of info. She suggested I make additional pages instead of a landing page for each section so I made two more sections apart from home page; about page and services page. About page includes more details about Ashley and the brand. And the services page includes more details about the courses, programs and how to enrol into the services.

I had gotten into learning about mockup and being very excited about it prior to the assignment so I though it might be a good way to learn blender if I did all the collaterals on blender instead of pre-made mockups because I never really liked using other people's works although they're free and I never could learn or want to do pixel based mockups that takes too long to make and takes even longer to make any changes. Blender is much different on that because I can model an object and change the whole environment, settings, lightings and angles very easily. So I decided I will try that although I was concerned about managing everything on time. 

I first modelled a laptop to be used for the website. It took me a while learn how to model objects but after a while it got pretty straight-forward. below is the first test-render of the laptop and a mobile phone that I modelled for the website.

I later exported the website design and tested on the laptop but I didn't like the proportions of when the screen is filled with the design and I couldn't figure out a better way so I placed the designs outside the laptop like screens and I got a fairly good result. although not very realistic, I liked it and thought it would do.

I then modelled the book in blender with some pages turning in the air.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

For the social media content, we had to show a full display of a social media page. And I thought Instagram was the best way to show it since instagram feed has 9 post-collection on a single screen. So I decided to use Instagram as the main social media hub and use the same content to share on other platforms such as Facebook  and twitter.

I used the ideas from the ideation and illustrated some more materials to make the content. Below is some of the progress such as illustrating paper cup characters which is for one of the carousels. I made 9 posts in total including the introduction video as one of them. 

After doing the designs I used blender to make the collaterals using the mobile phone I modelled with the laptop.

POSTERS / FLYERS:

The idea for the posters was to paste on streets and flyers to be handed over to people in public places. I wanted to use the same information and designs in both posters and flyers so they needed to include a brief set of all the information customers needed to know and how to reach the brand. So I designed it with contact details, qr code of the website and other basic information and did two designs for both posters and flyers.

 

After that I used blender to model how they would appear as real life posters and flyers.

MERCHANDISE

For the merchandise, I decided to do colouring books, keychains, stickers and t-shirts. Ms.Lillian suggested to add bags but after some thinking I told her about making pencil cases instead of bags because it suits the concept better and she also liked the idea.

COLOURING BOOK:

For the colouring book, I used the similar green background style as the cover but Ms.Lilian suggested that it is getting too monotonous and to make it more fun. So I decided to add more colour and sketch a new style. For the content pages, I used the outlines from the characters as the content so that kids can colour on them.

PENCIL CASE:

For the pencil case I illustrated a different image of Tom and jerry and put the logo type. I designed it simple to make it gender/age-neutral

After I was happy with the design, I modelled pencil cases with pencils in blender and applied the designs on them.

KEYCHAIN:

For the keychain, I did a different illustration using the image below of tom and jerry as reference.

The keychain was the toughest one to model in blender because it had multiple layers and each one had to be done separately. and the chain part was also very difficult so it took a long time to do it. And although Ms.Lilian suggested I do more keychains, it was impossible to do in the timeframe as the deadline was already too close to spend more time on it. So I did one keychain.

TSHIRTS:

For the t-shirts I used the design from the keychain, the logotype and another image of tom and jerry from the social media materials. 

By the time I did the tshirts, It was almost due so I couldn't model it on blender so I did a photoshop mockup of the design.

STICKERS:

For the stickers, I compiled all the character illustrations along with the logo and logomark. I also illustrated some more characters and combined into a whole sticker pack.

I then modelled the sticker pack and individual stickers on blender using the laptop I modelled for the website as the base.

FINAL DESIGN OUTCOMES:

INTRODUCTION VIDEO:

WEBSITE:

SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT:

Post 1:

Post 2:

Post 3:

Post 4:

Post 5:

Post 6:

Post 7:

Post 8:

Post 9:

POSTERS / FLYERS:

COLOURING BOOK:

PENCIL CASE:

KEYCHAIN:

TSHIRTS:

STICKERS:

FINAL COLLATERALS:

WEBSITE:

SOCIAL MEDIA FEED:

SOCIAL MEDIA STATIC POSTS:

SOCIAL MEDIA CAROUSELS:

POSTERS:

 FLYERS:

COLOURING BOOK:

PENCIL CASE:

KEYCHAIN:

TSHIRTS:

STICKERS:

FINAL SUBMISSION DECK

FEEDBACK

Week 7: Public holiday

Week 8: Public holiday

Week 9: Public holiday

Week 10: The direction is good but the progress is too slow and you need to produce more results soon because there is no time.

Week 11: Very good progression from last week. The consistency is good but somewhat monotonous as all the designs are too similar. Try to make it more playful and add more colours to the designs. Colouring book can be one area where you can make It more colourful and playful.

Week 12: Your new merchandise looks better than previously as there is more variation and texture. Especially like the keychain design, see if you can do more keychains. Might also be worth mocking them together if you have enough time to manage that since you are doing it on Blender. Look at the line quality that you have with the illustrated assets. A more organic thick and thin variation (like the one applied for keychain) may help the characters stand out more. 

REFLECTION

EXPERIENCE: 

Having had the design direction and ideation well drafted on task 2 was really helpful when I did the final task. I enjoyed illustrating the characters although I had lots of difficulty with the drawing tablet. The most fun part was after I decided to model and render all the designs in blender. I knew it would be extremely challenging but I really wanted to learn 3d and the best way was to apply it on a project with a deadline. I had a lot of fun with blender and learned so much about 3d modelling and applying designs on realistic objects.

OBSERVATION:

Branding people or campaigns has a lot more to it than I thought because it deals with thinking from various different angles and perspectives, You have to think from the perspective of the person you're branding, the audience and customers and have to make it about coming up with a branding that delivers the requirements of the person and the audience. My own personal ideas or aesthetics doesn't apply to it. So it takes a lot of thinking outside the box, interviewing, researching and understanding the subjects involved before thinking about designing anything. It is very crucial to have a step-by-step timeline and ideation. 

FINDINGS:

I always had trouble with mockups and finding the right mockups online. Because It's difficult to find mockups made with the style that fits the one I am currently designing as all designs work different. But I figured making 3d models and applying mockups was a much better way to apply any design on exactly what it is to be applied for. It gives way more creative freedom and it would all be my own work instead of others. I also found that the customer journey map is a very simplified way of understanding things from the target audiences perspective