M Shield

One Day Project (28th October)

On the 27th October we were set another one day project. (I thought we were only supposed to get one every project title?) This weeks one day project is a bit harder than last week’s one. I had 24 hours to come up with a brand for a charity named “Paradox”. The charity focused on raising awareness of environmentally friendly ways of using technology.

Its a bitch of a project. We had to create logos, letterheads, websites, and other advertising, promotional and visual motifs. It was to be aimed at men and woman in the 15-24 age range. Again, the work had to be submitted on my blog and available for all to see by 3.30pm on the 28th in room W112.

So last night I fired up Firefox and had a hunt around for ideas on deviantart.com flickr and Google Images to see what ideas I could come up with. After about an hour I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. So I fired up Photoshop and decided to follow a tutorial to see what I could create.

This is the result I came up with (with a fight with Photoshop telling me I couldn’t save due to lack of RAM)

As you can see, the image is rather dark and may not exactly work well with many applications. It also doesn’t have any particular “logo” or brand identification that stands out. So this morning when I walked into the mac labs at uni i decided to scrap that idea and try a different approach.

I created a logo based on two P’s that are flipped and inverted (See image below). I then had an idea of added the globe and the power icon into the centre of the P’s to help connect technology and nature together. I then had a play around with various other text effects and styles until I found something I like.

So here is the base logo that can be used pretty much anywhere with all sorts of styles and colours. This is helpful when placing them on different media because it can be tailored to suit pretty much anything. So using this base image I went on to creating different styles to be placed on the different media. I first created a standard header for a website using help from this tutorial I created the banner.

I went for a more “earthy” feel to the backdrop to connect to the nature theme, and then you have a more metallic text which connects to the technology side, however its not “overpowering” but fairly simple. If i were to add texture to it, like mud or electronic stuff, it would have less of an impact and look too busy.

I decided that the image would look well on a website which was set out in a similar colour scheme, and so I have done a mock up of what it could look like. Bare in mind, I did not spend a huge amount of time on it. But this what it would look like on a website:

I also created some promotional merchandise for the brand. I created a business card and letterhead that the charity could use. I have tried to keep these simple and not as flashy as the website, but still rather effective and attention grabbing.  It also shows how the main logo can be used in a different way and with a different colour scheme.

I simulated what promoting the brand could be like by putting it on a variety of advertising media. I chose to simulate placing the advert on a billboard and a piece of mobile technology (in this case the iphone).

The billboard uses the “eathy” feel again as it looks rather effective with the light rays going across the text. However, with more time, I could possibly customise a different style for that sort of advertising.

This is kind of an idea I had for promoting it on the Apple iPhone. This image was done in a few minutes and if I had more time, I would create a more detailed image regarding viewing various things on mobile media, and probably expand it showing another image with a more conventional browser.

So there you have it… The results to my second one day project. I have learnt a fair bit about how to view things, and create a full brand and various visual motifs in such short space of time. The logo was the hardest thing to get my head around, trying to create something that can be used almost anywhere and could be recognised easily. Its not easy, take it from me!

Overall though, I am happy with the work I have done today, but I wish I can do things a little quicker, because I finished writing this blog very close to the  3.30pm deadline… Will I ever learn???

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Tags: banner, billboard, business cards, day, iphone, letterhead, logo, one, paradox, project, website

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 3:24 pm and is filed under BAIMP, University.

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