At the beginning of class, everyone will take a minute to come up to the front and show us their corrupted logo designs. Once we've had a chance to comment, regroup and we'll collect those pieces for marking.
You held on to the actual finished colour logos while you were working on the corrupted versions. Put those "real" colour logos back in the client's binder and pass the binder back to the client.
Now that you've gone through the trauma of scandal its time to get your company back up and running. This is a good time to think about renewing the company's image by "rebranding" -- and that means taking back possession of your logo and redesigning it the way you want it to look!
Your assignment this week is to do at least three thumbnail redesigns of the company logo. You may use one of the logos designed by your original group of designers or you may start from scratch.
However: remember that logo design is an evolutionary process and brand loyalty can be just as adversely affected by a bad rebranding job as by a scandal. Let's take a look together at this great article on "10 Major Rebranding Disasters"
* Bring your three (or more) rebranded logo designs to class next week, when we'll continue working on the finished art version of your final logo design.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Lesson 4: The Activist Designer
So you've created a company, you've defined your brand, you've got a logo that represents your brand and all is well with the world, right?
Wrong.
Sometimes, just when a company seems to be rolling along nicely disaster strikes. Think of the Enron collapse, or Tiger Woods' sex scandal, or the BP oil spill. A single misstep by someone asleep at the switch in your company can jeopardize the integrity of your brand and have catastrophic results. If the public turns against you, watch out - your logo may fall victim to the activist designer.
That's exactly what happened to BP after last summer's horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As public anger over the company's ineptitude grew, activist designers began corrupting BP's logo as an expression of their outrage at the corporation.
Why be an activist designer? As someone who helps companies brand and market their goods and services through your creative efforts, you understand better than most people the power of the graphic symbol. Designers have a long tradition of using their creativity to affect change in society and there is a longstanding tradition in the design community to 'flex our muscles' now and then by poking fun at the brand identities of corporations.
Which brings us to your next assignment!
At the beginning of class, get together with the other members of your group. Place each designer's work - thumbnails, finished b/w art, colour roughs and finished colour art into the client binder. (Designers, make sure your name and student number are printed neatly in the bottom right hand corner of everything you include in the binder).
Pass the binder back to the clients. But wait, clients - DON'T even bother opening that binder! Pass it along in the other direction to the next group.
Once you have the new binder of designs, remove only the finished colour art pages. Each member of the group will choose one colour logo design from the ones included in the binder. Remember, this is someone else's work that's been placed in your care. Make sure not to lose or damage it in any way!
Turn to the front of the binder and review the client's brand description. As a group you'll now decide what heinous crime the company has committed. Did they scam their shareholders out of millions of dollars? Did they use child slave labour in some third world sweatshop to manufacture their products? Perhaps their manufacturing process caused a toxic waste spill in some small manufacturing community that resulted in hundreds ( or thousands ) of innocent people and animals dying. YOU decide.
Once the group has determined what the company in question has done wrong, write it down in the binder on a new page. Write as much detail as possible, because these details will help you as you decide how to corrupt the logo - and will help the rest of us determine whether you did an effective 'redesign' when we see your corrupted design next week!
Digital students: you will be working in Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: you'll be working on a new piece of provided bristol board.
Use the rest of class time to begin coming up with corrupted designs. Do at least three thumbnails, then choose your best design and go immediately to the full colour final (in gouache or watercolour) and be ready to show the class your corrupted design in class next week.
Wrong.
Sometimes, just when a company seems to be rolling along nicely disaster strikes. Think of the Enron collapse, or Tiger Woods' sex scandal, or the BP oil spill. A single misstep by someone asleep at the switch in your company can jeopardize the integrity of your brand and have catastrophic results. If the public turns against you, watch out - your logo may fall victim to the activist designer.
That's exactly what happened to BP after last summer's horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As public anger over the company's ineptitude grew, activist designers began corrupting BP's logo as an expression of their outrage at the corporation.
Why be an activist designer? As someone who helps companies brand and market their goods and services through your creative efforts, you understand better than most people the power of the graphic symbol. Designers have a long tradition of using their creativity to affect change in society and there is a longstanding tradition in the design community to 'flex our muscles' now and then by poking fun at the brand identities of corporations.
Besides, even though we depend on corporate clients to put bread on the table, every once in a while its kind of fun to "stick it to the man."
Which brings us to your next assignment!
At the beginning of class, get together with the other members of your group. Place each designer's work - thumbnails, finished b/w art, colour roughs and finished colour art into the client binder. (Designers, make sure your name and student number are printed neatly in the bottom right hand corner of everything you include in the binder).
Pass the binder back to the clients. But wait, clients - DON'T even bother opening that binder! Pass it along in the other direction to the next group.
Once you have the new binder of designs, remove only the finished colour art pages. Each member of the group will choose one colour logo design from the ones included in the binder. Remember, this is someone else's work that's been placed in your care. Make sure not to lose or damage it in any way!
Turn to the front of the binder and review the client's brand description. As a group you'll now decide what heinous crime the company has committed. Did they scam their shareholders out of millions of dollars? Did they use child slave labour in some third world sweatshop to manufacture their products? Perhaps their manufacturing process caused a toxic waste spill in some small manufacturing community that resulted in hundreds ( or thousands ) of innocent people and animals dying. YOU decide.
Once the group has determined what the company in question has done wrong, write it down in the binder on a new page. Write as much detail as possible, because these details will help you as you decide how to corrupt the logo - and will help the rest of us determine whether you did an effective 'redesign' when we see your corrupted design next week!
Digital students: you will be working in Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: you'll be working on a new piece of provided bristol board.
Use the rest of class time to begin coming up with corrupted designs. Do at least three thumbnails, then choose your best design and go immediately to the full colour final (in gouache or watercolour) and be ready to show the class your corrupted design in class next week.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Lesson 3: Designing with Colour & Focus Group Feedback
Once you have completed your finished art for the client approved logo design, bring it to class. Up to this point we've been working exclusively in black and white. If the logo is working effectively at both the full size and the 1 inch size you can now introduce colour to your design.
Digital students: you'll be developing colour options in Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: you may use pencil crayons or markers to develop potential colour schemes.
On an 8.5 by 11 inch page, develop three colour variations of the logo. Full colour may not be the best option. You may decide to use only one, two or perhaps more colours. Give thoughtful consideration to what you are trying to achieve, both in terms of graphic design and branding identity. Spend half an hour on this stage.
Once you have all completed your colour concepts, each design team will in turn bring their finished designs and colour options to the front where we will look at them on-screen while the design team's reporter reads the client's mission statement page from their binder. As a class we'll review and critique each logo design and give each designer/team some constructive feedback on their effort. This is much like what you would experience if the client were to decide to test your design with a focus group, which is a very typical procedure with new branding campaigns.
Based on what you hear from the client AND "the public" (the rest of the class), each designer will complete a finished colour version of their logo design.
Digital students: you'll be completeing your finished colour logo design in Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: you'll be creating your finished colour logo in gouache. Use the provided 8.5 by 11 inch bristol board, as we did with the black and white version.
* Be sure to include a 1" reproduction of the finished design in the lower right-hand corner.
Your finished designs should be ready for presentation at the beginning of our fourth class. Clients will be assessing the designer's work. Presentation will be assessed. Present your finished artwork with a tracing paper overlay. Name and student number printed neatly on the back in thin black line marker in the bottom right-hand corner.
Digital students: you'll be developing colour options in Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: you may use pencil crayons or markers to develop potential colour schemes.
On an 8.5 by 11 inch page, develop three colour variations of the logo. Full colour may not be the best option. You may decide to use only one, two or perhaps more colours. Give thoughtful consideration to what you are trying to achieve, both in terms of graphic design and branding identity. Spend half an hour on this stage.
Once you have all completed your colour concepts, each design team will in turn bring their finished designs and colour options to the front where we will look at them on-screen while the design team's reporter reads the client's mission statement page from their binder. As a class we'll review and critique each logo design and give each designer/team some constructive feedback on their effort. This is much like what you would experience if the client were to decide to test your design with a focus group, which is a very typical procedure with new branding campaigns.
Based on what you hear from the client AND "the public" (the rest of the class), each designer will complete a finished colour version of their logo design.
Digital students: you'll be completeing your finished colour logo design in Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: you'll be creating your finished colour logo in gouache. Use the provided 8.5 by 11 inch bristol board, as we did with the black and white version.
* Be sure to include a 1" reproduction of the finished design in the lower right-hand corner.
Your finished designs should be ready for presentation at the beginning of our fourth class. Clients will be assessing the designer's work. Presentation will be assessed. Present your finished artwork with a tracing paper overlay. Name and student number printed neatly on the back in thin black line marker in the bottom right-hand corner.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Lesson 2: Client Feedback and Revisions
Like it or not, one of the unavoidable realities of almost any design project is client feedback and the resulting revisions.
Client feedback can be a frustrating experience, but as creative artists we often tend to lose perspective about our own work and stop seeing it objectively. At a time like that a fresh set of eyes can help prevent a potential disaster of the sort that could result in your design being featured on yourlogomakesmebarf.com !
Once you've completed your thumbnails, pass them to the 'client' team so they can review your concepts. One client will review one designer's thumbnails, hopefully covering all the work done on a one-to-one basis.
If there are fewer clients than designers, some clients will have to review more than one designer's work. And of course the reverse situation: if there are fewer designers than clients, some clients will have to team up to review one designer's work.
Client feedback will be two part:
1. Fill out the Client Feedback form provided to you at the start of class.
2. Carefully tape the tracing paper overlay sheet along the top edge of the thumbnail page(s) and write specific comments and revision sketches on the tracing paper IMPORTANT: Indicate which thumbnail sketch is your preferred design by checkmarking it on the tracing overlay.
Once the designers have received their feedback, they can begin working on the revised final linear of the client's preferred design in pencil on an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper.
This final linear rendering should be done at a larger size. Do a single clean linear drawing of the client's favourite design - with revisions - at approximately 4 or 5 inches wide by whatever the proportionate height will be.
Digital students: once your clean linear drawing is completed, scan it in and begin working on the final b/w art in Adobe Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: once your clean linear is completed, transfer the drawing to the provided 8.5 x 11 bristol board and render it cleanly in black media (ink and brush, tech pen, black marker) use rulers and set squares as well as french curves to ensure your artwork looks as professional as possible.
* Be sure to include a 1" reproduction of the finished design in the lower right-hand corner.
Your finished designs should be ready for presentation at the beginning of our third class. Clients will be assessing the designer's work. presentation will be assessed. Present your finished artwork with a tracing paper overlay and cover sheet. Name and student number printed neatly on the back in black thin line marker in the bottom right-hand corner.
Client feedback can be a frustrating experience, but as creative artists we often tend to lose perspective about our own work and stop seeing it objectively. At a time like that a fresh set of eyes can help prevent a potential disaster of the sort that could result in your design being featured on yourlogomakesmebarf.com !
Once you've completed your thumbnails, pass them to the 'client' team so they can review your concepts. One client will review one designer's thumbnails, hopefully covering all the work done on a one-to-one basis.
If there are fewer clients than designers, some clients will have to review more than one designer's work. And of course the reverse situation: if there are fewer designers than clients, some clients will have to team up to review one designer's work.
Client feedback will be two part:
1. Fill out the Client Feedback form provided to you at the start of class.
2. Carefully tape the tracing paper overlay sheet along the top edge of the thumbnail page(s) and write specific comments and revision sketches on the tracing paper IMPORTANT: Indicate which thumbnail sketch is your preferred design by checkmarking it on the tracing overlay.
Once the designers have received their feedback, they can begin working on the revised final linear of the client's preferred design in pencil on an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper.
This final linear rendering should be done at a larger size. Do a single clean linear drawing of the client's favourite design - with revisions - at approximately 4 or 5 inches wide by whatever the proportionate height will be.
Digital students: once your clean linear drawing is completed, scan it in and begin working on the final b/w art in Adobe Illustrator.
Creative Studio students: once your clean linear is completed, transfer the drawing to the provided 8.5 x 11 bristol board and render it cleanly in black media (ink and brush, tech pen, black marker) use rulers and set squares as well as french curves to ensure your artwork looks as professional as possible.
* Be sure to include a 1" reproduction of the finished design in the lower right-hand corner.
Your finished designs should be ready for presentation at the beginning of our third class. Clients will be assessing the designer's work. presentation will be assessed. Present your finished artwork with a tracing paper overlay and cover sheet. Name and student number printed neatly on the back in black thin line marker in the bottom right-hand corner.
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