Logostarter 1 Week Brief Introduction, Initial Thoughts and Project Choice & Logo Requirements - Study Task 3

Logostarter 1 Week Brief Introduction, Initial Thoughts and Project Choice & Logo Requirements 

Studio Brief.

Kickstarter is a web service for 'crowd sourcing' projects, products and businesses. Members of the public can pledge money towards projects ranging from music to technology to food. Your assignment for this week is to produce a logo design for a Kickstarter project of your choice. You will also consider and plan various branding strategies for your chosen project showing how your logo will enforce this brand

Your logo will incorporate your knowledge of the project and it's creators having fully researched its origin. You will also consider carefully the market and or social context to which it belongs (e.g. music genre, locale, etc.).

Once you have developed and designed an effective logo you will demonstrate how this will appear on at least 2 deliverable elements (e.g. Poster, packaging, CD, advert, website, etc.).

Background & Considerations.

• There are many variations and contradictions about what makes an effective logo and of course these wil change depending on what or who the logo is for. Therefore it is important to commit to research about logo design as well as contextual aspects related to the project / product itself.
• What is branding? When presenting and submitting your work you must show evidence that you have considered possible branding strategies for your chosen project.
• An effective logo must be able to work in the various branding contexts of a company or organisation therefore you must show that you have applied your logo to at least 2 deliverable elements (these could be print or digital).

Mandatory Requirements.

• All research, development, experiments and decision-making should be documented in your studio practice blog with clearly labelled posts.
• Your design boards must include: summary of research, evolution of design ideas, final design, branding considerations, logo placed on deliverable elements.
• All submitted work including your blog should be clearly labelled. Mislabelled or confusing work may result in depleted marks.
• Your work must be accompanied by an evaluation of at least 500 words.

Deliverables.

1. A final logo design for your chosen project including images of your logo placed in various contexts.

2. A body of research, development and experimental work including references to any reading, research and discussions undertaken for the project.

3. Evidence of contextual research (branding, logo design, communication, etc.) that informed your project outcome.

Problem Analysis & Introduction. 
After having a scan through the brief the problem I need to solve is simple enough in terms of the final outcome. I need to produce a logo for a project found on Kickstarter and place it into several contexts to show how it can be reproduced and adapted. To support this logo I will present a branding proposal outlining how this logo could be carried out over a full company rebrand, obvious visual and contextual research will be required to inform this proposal. 

To benefit my PPP module and introduce me to live briefs I plan on contacting the company too to offer my services of a free Logo, this would allow me to ask a series of questions on what they want. 

Considerations & Initial Thoughts
To produce a successful logo that explores all angles of contextual and aesthetic elements I have a lot to consider. 

• History & Background of the product or service.
• Target Market.
• Aesthetic, Conceptual & Contextual inspiration.
• Color and its meaning/connotations.
• Emotion emulation (Humorous, Serious, Lighthearted, Playful etc)
• Logo positioning. 
• Typeface and its connotations.
• Cultural & Social influences. 
• Production methods.
• Time scale.
• How does the logo react in terms of reproduction and adaptability.
• Complex or simple?
• Versatile customizable logo or a set fixed logo system?
• How I can convert and communicate the services and product in a visual and conceptual outcome.
• Current collateral and existing branding. 
• Learn from mistakes of failed logos. 
• Learn from successful logos. 
• Take all the above into account to outline the specific requirements of the logo. 
• Take out books on logo and branding alongside internet sources to develop a good body of conceptual and visual research.
• Experiment, Experiment, Experiment with concepts and visuals. Sketch, Analyze, Criticize, Develop or Move on. 

Kickstarter Intro & Project I chose to create Logo for. 

I have browsed Kicktstarter loosely before and admire the whole concept behind it.The basic idea behind it is that its a source were creatives and entrepreneurs can pitch for funding for there creative projects. Sort of like an online dragons den without the harsh critical feedback and with alot more potential backers at hand. 

Since 2009 7.1 million people have pledged $1 Billion tuning 71000 projects. If full 100% funding is achieved the creator keeps full ownership of there work and whoever pledged depending on the amount get a certain level of the product or service they backed. 

I really appreciate this source and would consider using it if I needed any large amount of money to back a project.  

There are lots of categories to search for I want to have a look into 5 groups that appeal to me the most and narrow down to a project from there. Crafts, Design, Food, Music & Publishing.

 I will be looking for projects with lots of potential creative idea generation opportunities and/or projects that have bad branding/logos or non at all. 

Food.

This one caught my eye through last years graduates Hungry Sandwich Club promoting the project through there Instagram and were part of the promotion material along with help from other Leeds College of Art Alumni Passport Design.

I like the idea of the Leeds Indie Food festival and offers the opportunity for independent food/drink shops to gather under one roof to help promote there services. Its intentions are to rival the larger restaurant festival they run at the moment sponsored by big supermarkets. Small independent shops like these often offer a higher quality food or drink product compared to the larger brands and this needs to be appreciated. 

I can't really take this into a logo and brand proposal stage as Hungry Sandwich Club have already nailed the promotions and brandings but its nice to see a local project been so well received.

Music.
The Danger Island album project attracted my eye mainly for the illustrative imagery they use within there album covers. I saw this illustrative playful and lighthearted style of illustration a reflection of there music and would give nice opportunities to creating a logo from to represent there music. 

So this is an option at the moment as creating a more illustrative logo would be nice rather than going down the usual corporate clean-cut aesthetic. Something more playful and lighthearted would be nice to do. 

Publishing.
The manual is a design journal for the web, I often browse design blogs like itsnicethat, tundrablog, form fifty five and design milk to name a few and see them as a great resource for designers to gather inspiration and the latest cultural trends within the creative industry. 

Like its nice thats printed pages they want to create printed medias to highlight all favorite projects and articles. They intend to release 3 per year with supporting web editions.

I wouldn't mind doing a logo and brand proposal for this project as I feel theres something nice about compiling web resources into a physical outcome that you can keep and archive and appreciate without the need of trawling the internet through past posts. This project just reached its £40'000 goal with 30 hours to spare I'm glad it made it as I feel it has lots of milage within it. 

Crafts.
Marshfellow Plush is a project that isn't backed much at the moment $1000 has been pledged so far from the $11000 goal. I like the playfulness and feel the humorous characters she has created has lots of potential to create colorful, warming and humorous logo outcomes. I can see lots of pastel colors used within the branding of this project, with elements of traditional sweetshop aesthetics to support the Marshmallow concept behind the characters. 

Im not sure if I could stretch it to its full potential though, my style wouldn't really fit this playful, childlike and feminine aesthetic. 


Chosen Project Design - Product Design.
The Whiskey Element really caught my eye and is the project I'm going to chose to create a logo for, they already have a certain element of branding collateral but I feel this and the logo has potential for improvement. I am going to contact the curator of the project once I have everything finalized and received feedback on it. If its positive Il pitch it forward.

The funding will go towards a laser cutting machine to cut down on cost and produce the wooden elements more efficiently and will go towards lab testing for things like flavor development and chemical reaction analyze. 

The main concept behind the product is to enhance the taste of bottom shelf/budget whiskey and offer customization to the avid whiskey drinkers tipple. They say that these elements can add 3 years worth of taste enhancement within 24hours. 

Reading through the project proposal I highlighted alot of key elements within the concept and the background of the project that I could work from:

• The idea of customizable whiskey suggests ideas of a customizable logo system?
• Accelerated aging of a bottom shelf whiskey to emulate top shelf whiskey. 
• A sense of control for the end user over there drinking experience, customize the taste (Rich, Dark, Earthy, Smokey, Smooth, Vannilla, Peaty, Maple and Oaky) all tastes of a good whiskey. 
• Natural Process that purifies bottom shelf brands, nasty chemicals like Metho-phenyl-oxine often found in pig/mouse feces. 
• Traditional Feel. 
• Idea of the name "element" linking to scientific periodic tables?
• Barrel aged taste within 24 hours. 
• Play off the words Time & Oak to produce idea generation from. 

Problems with developing a logo for this project.

The problem with choosing this project is that they already have a clear logo and brand going on, but I feel the logo is the least successful part of the whole package and feel the brand could be stretched out a lot more and reproduced onto alternative collateral. They seem to have attempted to create an abstract aesthetic with an ampersand that resembles a traditional sand timer.  

All the photographs across the promotional pitch ll have a very traditional feel staying true to typical whiskey branding. There are two directions I could take my ideas from this context, either keep this traditionally or go the opposite way and do a contemporary modern reproduction to stand out from the crowd. 

Whiskey Elements HYPEBEAST feature. 

Found a quick feature of the kickstarted project I chose to do a logo on on the fashion, culture, technology and art blog HYPEBEAST. Pretty cool that they got a mention on here showing there success and potential for been a very well received product.