Style Guide

For my last piece of design, I had to create a style guide, explaining my design and how its put together, down to fine details such as PMS and typeface size, style and position. I tried to include everything important in this guide, allowing anyone that might potentially need to, to put together this brand correctly, without making any mistakes that I planned to avoid. I think that the design of this brand is very successful, and I think the minimal approach to the design fits well with not only Anderson’s style but also himself as a person, with regards to how little is publicly known about him personally. I think that I have made a strong design and I feel it would be successful as a real brand in the world.

Pantones

After discussions with my tutor about my design, it was pointed out to me that if this design were to be sent to a printers, they would most likely require a Pantone colour reference to ensure the colour they printed was right. Pantone Inc. is a corporation based in New Jersey and is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS) which used in a variety of industries, primarily for printing. So far in my design, I had used only one colour, a yellow taken from a screenshot of one of Anderson’s films. Because of this, I only had a Hexadecimal colour reference, but not a PMS.

#E6C02D

C: 11% M: 22% Y: 88% K: 1%

I wanted to make sure my designs were as professional as possible, so that if they were ever to be used in the real world, they would be ready and could be taken for use straight away. For that reason, I wanted to make sure I had the colour correct so there would be no problems with printing. To get a pantone colour as close to the original yellow that I could, I printed one of my designs and compared it with a number of yellows from the Pantone booklet. I looked tried a range of colours and also input some of them into Illustrator next to my original design, to compare them digitally as well to try and get the closest match I could.

After comparing the different Pantones, I decided that the closest to my original colour, and the one I liked best was PMS 129C. I found that this colour was slightly lighter than my original, which I actually prefer. I think this lighter colour makes my designs more vibrant and eye-catching. Now that I have a PMS, I will go through my designs that I have already made, and change the original colour to the new, brighter yellow. This will also help me when making my style guide as I will have and more clear reference for the colour I have used and what will need to be used if my design was sent out to a printers.

PMS 129C

#F6CE3C

C: 4% M: 18% Y: 83% K: 0%

Compliment Slips

As part of my brief I was required to make a compliment slip. This is a small piece of paper which has the brands name, address, and logo printed on and is normally a third of an A4 page. They are typically sent out with goods or information, often in place of a covering letter. I looked at a few examples for some inspiration, and I found that it doesn’t need to look hugely different from most other branded documents. I wanted to keep the same kind of style that I had been using for my other designs, making sure the branding all fits together and making it clear that this compliment slip is part of the same campaign for Wes Anderson’s brand.

I experimented with a range of different ideas, playing with type size, placement, capitals and lower case. I tried to keep the design as simple and minimal as I could, fitting with the rest of the brands design. I chose to keep the same type face that I had used throughout the previous designs, Futura, and to keep the same signature yellow, tying in with the theme of the brand. For the smaller contact details, I chose to use the same style as with the letterhead by making them grey and slightly transparent, helping the yellow design to stand out more and to remain the most important aspect of the design.

 

Letterhead

My next step in the process was to design a letterhead. To begin with, I decided to try using the original logo with the large typography, to see how I felt about it. After remaking the logo with the smaller type, I found that I didn’t like this quite so much anymore, so I think it was definitely the right choice to remake the logo into something much more minimalistic.

Following this, I took away the large typography, however I kept the opacity turned down slightly, as I quite liked the look that it gave to the design. I experimented with the text and without, and whilst I think both were strong designs, I think that using the text looks much better. I feel like it helps to break up the letterhead, separating it from the white space that will be filled with body copy, rather than the logo just blending into it.

After printing my letterhead to see how it would look when in use, I found that the low opacity on the logo looked much weaker when printed, which is something I didn’t want happening to my design. Because of that I turned it back up to 100%, bring back the full colour of the logo and making the design look much stronger. Im really happy with this design, and I think the simplicity of it further encourages this idea of mystery and the focus on Anderson’s style that I have been playing with throughout this project. I decided to include the contact details for Anderson at the bottom of the page, allowing the logo to sit at the top on its own. I think this also encourages the idea of mystery and it also enhances the very minimal look that I have been working around throughout this brief.

Finalised Logo

After designing my business card and dropping the typography, I decided to revisit my logo and change it around a little bit. As much as I liked the big, loud typography before, I feel like I changed my mind after making my business card, and I don’t think it is as effective as I thought it was. Im not sure that it worked well on a small scale, and also I feel like it was very loud and shouty, which I think takes away from the idea that Anderson is quite a quiet, mysterious person. After looking at these things I decided to get rid of the typography completely, leaving just the vector.

The only problem with this is that whilst this is a recognisable logo, there are many people who still don’t know who Wes Anderson is, let alone what he looks like. Therefore I felt like I needed to have some kind of text in the design, just to let people know who may be unaware. I wanted to make sure this type wasn’t loud at all and didn’t stand out, but just supported the design, leaving the vector to still be the main part of the logo. I decided to make the title small and central, using simple text. I still kept the same typeface and I still felt like Futura fit the design best. Personally, I think this new logo is much stronger, whereby it is much simpler. There is not too much going on, and I think the focus is now solely on the vector, which will help to make it more recognisable and more memorable, as people will not be able to rely on the large, eye-catching type.

Business Cards

After creating my logo, I moved onto my business card. I felt that the logo would be the most significant part of the brand design, as once that has been created, everything else would be designed around it, and it would be a case of layout, more so than making design. Using my logo, I mocked up a variety of different card designs, experimenting with portrait and landscape, and also overlays and how simplistic I wanted to make it.

I decided to use Futura for the small print on the business card, as well as the large logo typography. I think this helps to tie the two aspects together better, altogether making for a stronger, more focussed. I liked the idea of decreasing the opacity of some parts of the logo, and overlaying some parts to make some more interesting work. I also really liked the idea of splitting up the logo, separating the vector and the typography, allowing me to spread the design across both sides of the card. This also proves that the two parts of the logo also work individually as strong designs.

Overall, I liked the minimalist designs best, and I decided to actually drop the typography completely, working only with the vector. As this is a very simple logo, I decided to also keep the reverse of the card very minimalist, including only the contact information, without any other visual devices. I think this is a very strong design, and the minimal aspect works well with the style of design I have chosen, as it is all very clean cut and simplified. I think this also helps to back up the idea of Anderson as a person being quite unknown, as the card keeps the mysterious effect that I had created with the original logo. Now, after designing the card and looking back, I feel like this is something that you could find in one of Anderson’s films, which I think further encourages the idea that he is best known for his work, and not him as a person.

Logo Development

After coming up with as many rough ideas that I could think of, I decided to take a few of my favourite ideas through to Illustrator to experiment with what would work best. I started by looking at typography and what typefaces would be best suited for the brand. After experimenting with lots of typefaces and layouts I found a few of my favourites and arranged them in a style that was strong and bold. Overall I decided to use Futura as my main typeface as I liked the simple, bold look that it has and I felt like this best suited what I thought about when I pictured Anderson’s style

After doing some further research, I found this video of Anderson talking about the process and some of the ideas behind one of his films, Moonrise Kingdom. In the video he briefly talks about colour, mentioning the yellow tents used throughout the film. He mentions that he has used the same colour tent in a previous film and was unsure about using it again, but he couldn’t picture the tent being any other colour. This kind of deep, mustard yellow is a common site in many of Anderson’s films, and it is obvious that he liked to use this colour. Personally I think that it is one of the main things that sum up Anderson’s style, and so I decided to use it in the design of his branding.

The next idea that I wanted to play with, was to create a vector of Anderson’s face to potentially be used as a logo. I liked the idea of this concept as it would be simple and hopefully recognisable.

As I began tracing areas of the face, I decided to stop after making the hair. I think that Anderson’s hairstyle is the most recognisable aspect of his appearance, as it has never really changed to much and it is something that would be easily recognisable to people who are aware of what he looks like; and to people who don’t know what he looks like, it will give them an idea of his appearance and hopefully make him slightly more recognisable.

After finalising the vector of the hair, I took a screenshot from the film Moonrise Kingdom, as this is where I was going to find the signature yellow that Anderson spoke about in the video. I used the colour picker tool to grab different shades until I found one that I liked, and that I thought worked well with the design I had made. After getting the colour to one that I wanted, I copied in a few examples of the typography that I had been experimenting with beforehand, keeping the same typeface I had used before.

Out of the typography examples that I chose, my favourites were the ones with the hollow text. I really like the way it works with the yellow, and it definitely relates to Anderson’s work, taking inspiration from the poster for his film, The Life Aquatic.

I continued to experiment with colour until I had refined my ideas down to a few possibilities, experimenting with borders, colours, and backgrounds. I really like the shape that is created with the text underneath the logo, and I feel it works as one piece, where the type doesn’t look separate or split from the vector, but rather it blends and creates one image. I think this is a very strong logo, and I feel that the vector says a lot about Wes Anderson, and therefore is a fitting design for his work. I think that using just the hair, and not including any facial features hints at the fact that Anderson is quite a private person, and not a lot is widely known about him. I also think the yellow suits the design, and I feel that using that signature colour  with the mysterious, minimalist vector emphasises the fact that Anderson is widely known for his work and his unique style, more so than anything else in his life.

Initial Ideas

My first step towards creating branding for Wes Anderson was to quickly sketch out as many ideas as I could for logo designs and brand ideas. This use of divergent thinking I think was very useful and it allowed me to come up with a large amount of ideas, allowing for a better, more thought out design to manifest, rather than just picking the first idea I thought of. Throughout this process I considered aspects like colour, inspiration for the ideas, and even how the logo may be used. I think I came up with some solid ideas and there are definitely a few concepts that I will take through and begin to experiment with to see how well they will work. Much of the inspiration behind these ideas comes from his films and his renowned style, as this is the thing that he is most known for, rather than any aspects of his personal life, which are largely unknown.

Branding Examples

Google

One of the most recent and noticeable rebrands that almost everyone will have seen is the Google rebrand. As Google is such a huge company and brand, it has created a site devoted solely to the design and rebrand of Google, found at https://design.google.com.

‘Since its inception, the Google.com homepage has been strikingly simple: The quirky, multicolored logo sits above a single, approachable input field on a clean white canvas. But as technology moves forward, the canvas itself is changing, and the inputs and needs are becoming more diverse. New classes of devices and ways to interact and communicate have emerged with wearables, voice technology, and smart devices in the world around us. Users now engage with Google using a constellation of devices, and our brand should express the same simplicity and delight they expect from our homepage, while fully embracing the opportunities offered by each new device and surface.’

Personally, I really like the new look from Google; I think it is much more modern than previously, I think the simplicity works well, and I think it more successfully fits with all of the new technologies and areas that Google has taken over and brought to the public. After reading through the case study and understanding some of the reasons behind why certain design decisions were made, I now understand more the importance of my own decisions and how important it is that they are backed up with sound reasoning and research. This all comes together to make a stronger, and altogether more effective brand.

One thing that Google seem to have done really well in their rebrand, is utilising simplicity. The state in the case study that they started by stripping the Google brand right down to its bare minimum, its renowned four colours against a plain white background. From their they designed a simpler, more modernised very of Google, revolving largely around the four colours and they way they work together against the white background. This is definitely something to consider when I design work on my own branding projects. Simple design is always effective and I think that this process will be useful, especially with my celebrity and the kind of design I want to make.

Soda Folk

Another example of some great branding is a company called Soda Folk. A smaller brand based in Colorado USA, this is some very different branding, although I think it is very strong and I have taken a lot of inspiration from these designs. I actually came across the brand when I ordered a Root Beer from a restaurant I was eating at, and I was brought one of these cans. I was immediately drawn in by the simple, illustrative design and I loved the way they had integrated the illustration into the design, which is something I am always interested in doing. I also really liked the typography. I thought the simple, bold text stood out on the design, and was very well suited to the feel of the brand. I also think the colour scheme, although quite unusual, was very effective and that it fit with the overall design very well.

I was intrigued by the branding of this drink, and so later I went to the company’s website to further look at the branding and to see how effective it was. The site was simple, bold, and fit the theme of the brand very well. I immediately got a wilderness-y, American feel from the brand before even reading about it, and I think that is conveyed well through the type, the choice of imagery, and the way that it has been put together. Whilst looking at this brand, I was constantly thinking that the style would be very well suited to Wes Anderson, and the simplistic, environmental design with the bright colours and simple typography would fit well into any branding for him. I found that I got an overall good feeling from this brand, and it successfully conveyed that it is a company with good values, a simple goal, and a love for hard work and honest products, which I think links with the ideas around Anderson as well.

At the bottom of the Soda Folk website there was a quote from the founder of the company. I think this quote encompasses the whole idea of the brand, from the hard work and good quality products, to the idea of home and skilled workers doing an honest job. This is a very well branded company, and the design of their products conveys the message that they have very successfully. I think this is an excellent example and it has definitely influenced my own ideas about branding, which will be apparent in my designs.

Site: http://sodafolk.co.uk