Final major project

The following is a selection of final deliverables submitted as part of my major project: a complete visual identity for BrandWorthy including visual identity guidelines, research and concept development report and marketing plan.

To see more examples or find links to the entire final project, visit my portfolio website here.

Additional concepts and early application

Below are additional concepts and early application ideas for the BrandWorthy identity.

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Concepts

The following are ideas for the various components that will ultimate make up the Brand Worthy brand including lay out organization, color, typography, photography and logo. The concepts center around one theme: to use the graphic style of HTML and CSS coding to create a user friendly, engaging design identity.

In the mood

Below is an image I created to capture how I’m approaching the concept stage of my major project. The board alludes to the two-tier audience theory described in my earler post. Essentially this brand must show that the company understands the tech-savvy client yet is also able to create consumer-friendly brands and UIs.

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Charts, graphs and lists

Talking to Elise last month (see interview here) raised many questions in my mind and made me realize that I still had much to learn about the tech industry and its unique marketing needs. Through internet and library research, I found a couple of great resources that helped me lay the groundwork for understanding what I’ve determined are the two tiers of audience I was about to design to.

Tier One: Our clients

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I found a very well written blog article entitled “Why High Tech Companies Have Low Brand I.Q.’s" by Dannielle Blumenthal that playfully discusses the different ways tech people and branding people think (finally determining that they think completely differently). Essentially, the branders need the techies to create innovative products and the techies need the branders to sell the product to the right audience. Below I’ve illustrated the article’s metaphor, “A technology and a brand person walk up to a tree”:

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The authors of Winning Market Leadership: Strategic Market Planning for Technology-Driven Businesses go into great detail about how to successfully market a tech product. Regarding the tech industry’s view of marketing, they confirmed a point Elise made during our interview saying, “Many technology-intensive business underestimate the importance of marketing communications, assuming that great products will 'sell' themselves.” They cite Microsoft as an example of an "inferior" product that thrived due to effective positioning and marketing communications. (p. 22)

Tier Two: Our clients’ consumers
More so, the authors of Winning Market Leadership extensively explain the second target audience tier for my design. Most helpful for my research was their outline of the unique, global environment technology exists in which involves swift, dynamic change and blurred market boundaries. They explain that tech businesses are also ruled by network effects – meaning that the value of a product or service to its users depends on the number of users engaging with it. (p. 5) An example would be social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter that thrive because the number of people using them to communicate with each other.

They then detail the adoption process through which all tech products are subjected to. These labels and accompanying descriptions really capture the tier two audience and their varying degrees of tech-savvy.

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Competition:
No communications research project is complete without taking a look at potential competition for your product/service. As Elise alluded to in our interview, there are very few agencies out there specializing in this specific niche. Here are a few that I did find:
http://www.matizmo.co.uk
http://www.binarypulse.com/bp/index.asp
http://www.clarityqst.com
http://www.otmmarketing.com
http://www.creativerge.net

With this newly developed knowledge base, I feel ready to start thinking creatively about how I’m going to give this company a look, vision and voice.

Getting on the same page

I’ve recently been getting started on research for my major project (see brief here). My first step was to talk to my client, Elise W., to get her thoughts on what this brand needs to accomplish. Here is the write up of my interview with her:

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Gearing up for New Blood

The past few weeks, I've been preparing for our degree show at D&AD's New Blood Exhibition. Not only have I launched a brand new website and revamped my blog (as you can see), I've also produced the following business cards and display boards for the show.

Major project: brief and timeline

Introduction
Scheduled to launch in 2012, Worthy Brands will be a premier marketing firm, focused on marketing research, statistics, and data-driven communications. Because of extensive experience in and passion for programming and technology, the company, led by founder Elise Worthy, will exclusively serve tech firms. With a deep understanding of this market, Worthy Brands will be better able to quickly evaluate need and execute on projects - more so than any other communications agency.



Services:
- Market/Competitive Analysis
- Customer Analysis
- Website Design
- Communication Design
- Campaigns (E-mail, Ad, Social Media)
- Visual Identity Standard Creation

Worthy Brands’ clients will primarily be web applications and technology-focused firms, for example:
- http://lessaccounting.com/

- http://livingsocial.com

- http://rubycentral.com/
- http://www.python.org/psf/
- http://www.etsy.com/

Project proposal
Worthy Brands will need a fresh and innovative identity of its own in order to market its services and attract and keep clientele. Because the company itself is a communications agency, the pressure is on to create a compelling identity to brand its impressive portfolio of work.

Tactics:

1. Market research: complete analysis of competition and target audience. Define strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats. Identify audience demographics.
2. Creative development: present mood board and identity concepts for client critique
3. Testing: present draft concept to sample of target market
4. Implementation: apply final concept to following deliverables

Deliverables

Design elements:

• Logo
• Tagline
• Typographic style
• Color palette
• Tone of voice

Application concepts:

• Printed communications
• Business cards
• Stationary
• Portfolio
• Presentation folders
• Brochure
• Signage
• Online communications
• Website
• E-mail signature
• E-newsletter template
• PPT template

Tools:

• Brand guidelines
• Marketing plan

Timeline:

Bound and in the bag

Here are the spreads and some photos of my final Design Authorship project entitled "-jectivity: a search engine encyclopedia". This work asks the reader to question the quality of information referenced everyday by internet users (aka basically everyone) and compare this method of fact finding with those of the past. Presented in the guise of an actual encyclopedia, the subjective information pulled from search engine output is presented in the style of Neue Graphik - a design aesthetic pioneered to reveal objectivity in graphic content.

Hip Hip Hurray

Bits and Bobs

A little something inspired by a dear friend.

Good design IS sustainable

By definition ‘design’ is ‘a plan for the construction of an object or system’. I would assume then that the definition of ‘good design’ occurs when the designer takes into consideration all the effects his or her design will have on its surroundings, from the highly likely to the remotely possible. Will the design serve its intended purpose, is it cost effective, is it functional, etc. And of course included on this list in which each item is what is its impact – long term and short term – on our environment.

Janine Rewell's sporks

Obviously, no design is perfect and the designer must make decisions about whether they are comfortable recommending a design that fails in one area in order to succeed in another. It would appear that when an effort is made to make a design environmentally friendly, compromises must be made on cost effectiveness. Reclaimed materials are often more expensive than non-recycled. It can cheaper to have something manufactured overseas than have it produced locally.

Therefore, whether or not to make a design sustainable lays within the hands of the designer and it determined by their list of priorities. Personally, I always hold environmental responsibility high on my list of criteria of good design.

All Buttoned Up

The following are photos of my final Business for Design project - stationary for my imaginary agency, Button Communications, and a business plan with brand usage guidelines.

Final business plan:

Click here to view the entire business plan.

Presentation folder:

Stationary:

Business cards: