Thursday, April 1, 2010

Type: Designing Brand Identity

While browsing through this book, I pull some random things that I found interesting or funny to me. One of the first things that came across while browsing was Heidi Cody's American Alphabet of letters used on consumer brands like the Y from the york peppermint patties. I felt that Heidi's Alphabet gave me a new idea of how I could create my identity of the conference. Then by page 8, I came across on scenarios that demonstrate brand identity that experts may need, like when starting a company, you need someone to come up with a website, business cards, and so on. This page opened my mind that a graphic designer, we have many opportunities to look for work.

Further in to browsing, I came across some nice work like the Wave poster that is trying to add dimension to a flat surface. Also seeing Wolff Olins's Tate poster that was considered to have dynamic and futuristic feel, reminded me of Katerine McCoy's Gag 5 poster.

I flipped through a few more pages and read that perception leads into behavior where behavior leads into performance. And Tom Watson's quote "Good design is good business." I felt that these two things that you can have an idea, but on the way it is taken in will answer if it is the design is good.

One of the things I learned about branding was that there are some naming myths. Like naming a company is easy, like naming a baby. We will know the name when we hear it. We'll just search for the name ourselves. And lastly, We can't afford to test a name that doesn't work, is the way I took this one. Also making a brandmark, can be an abstract mark that uses a visual form to convey a big idea.

Overall, I felt like we could have used this book in the process of making our concept maps because I could have used more ideas in some areas, like instead of shirts, why not vests for the works, just as an example.

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