Self Branding PPP Practical

The aim of this project was to design, develop and produce a piece of self branding that effectively communicated and promoted me as an individual, designer and learner. To inform my design decisions I had to reflect upon my learning aspirations and design direction. 

I used this brief as an opportunity to explore, develop and demonstrate content, processes and areas of design that interested me as a designer at this point on the course.

I had to discover my preferred areas of design and start to consider what design aspects I liked to specialized in, finding a unique selling point about my work. The brief also required me to visually represent myself by creating my own style of brand that suits the way I like to work. 

Additionally the deliverables for this brief were my own choice. I chose what pieces of design to produce that would best represent me and my developing practice. 

These are the essential targets that I had to meet for the project: 

• Select or modify a typeface to used to display your name. 

• Colour swatch.

• Typeface (display and body copy)

• Presentation template (grid)

I had to consider various aspects such as the information I was going to include in the product I was designing,  what tone of voice best reflected me, and what my own visual identity was. 

One top of this the brief required a purpose for my self branding. There was no point designing a buisness card / letterhead as I had no buisness to promote or represent as at this stage I am still finding my creative direction. Therefore I had to create something with an approproate and relevant use, that will benefit me as a young emerging designer. 

Before I started on my self branding project I first had to reflect on where my passions and strengths lay with being a designer. This was a crucial factor in identifying the areas that made my work unique and also in focussing my sights on a design path I want to follow and build upon. 

Despite only deciding I wanted to do Graphic Design a year ago I felt like I have come a long way already in starting to understand the vast array of design possibilities that come with studying the subject. It is for this reason however that I am not particularly confident that I have found my niche yet.

I am much more confident with a pen and paper in my hands, sketching ideas, drawing mock-ups and brainstorming. Drawing has been my number one passion for as long as I can remember and I am extremely confident in my drawing ability. I also love painting, collage and making prints and stamps basically anything tactile. This is an element that I wanted to draw upon in my work to creating a unique selling point. 

In terms of graphic design however I enjoy bright, colourful 2D design mixed in with hand rendered elements such as hand drawn typography and illustration. I also like packaging design and branding.

Therefore I aimed to create a product that showcased my passion and talent for drawing / painting/ making as well as a funny / witty element that will make me memorable as a designer/ prove I don’t take myself too seriously.

For inspiration I started taking into consideration which artists and designers inspired me that specialised in both branding and packaging aswell as hand rendered typogrpahy and illustration. 

One of my main design interests is hand rendered typography. There are a range of designers that I follow, each with their unique style that have inspired me with their hand drawn lettering. 

One example is BabeScrub’s packaging which uses hand lettering from artist Jasmine Dowling. In this case the hand rendered effect adds a playful twist to the product’s packaging, emphasising the feel good quote on the front of the bottle. The colours used also compliment the unusual charcoal soap inside. 

Corina Nika is another artist whose work inspires me. She is a freelance graphic designer, hand letterer, and an art director, living on the idyllic island of Kefalonia. She has worked for an impressive list of clients including Nicole Sherzinger, Ellie Saab and virgin money. 

Her work often combines hand rendered type with digital processes and more traditional typography. 

Another graphic designer whose work I have been following for a while is Lucio Crescente. He does a range of hand drawn lettering and caligraphy in a number of different colours, media and styles as well as exploring more digital processes throught the rest of his work.

As well as hand lettering another design area I am interested in is illustration.
Especially pen and ink illustrations like the work of German illustrator Evelyn Hahn. 

I really like the different thicknesses of lines she uses in her work and the use of dots, stripes and block colours for shading. The quirky characters with unusual proportions add a fun and intereting element to her style. 

Another similar illustrator is lucinda rogers. She too uses varying line strokes in
her work and a mix of different media to add interest. 

I hope to experiment with these styles in my emerging practice by playing around with  a number of different pens when drawing. 

I wanted to include one of my own illustrations in my self branding to show my interst in the field and I chose to do a self portrait so whoever gets the packing has a more unusual way to put a name to the face.

Once I had decided that I wanted to do a piece of packaging for my self bradning I started looking at existing examples of packaging and branding, both tea and otherwise that I found inspiring. 

These illustrated Tequila bottles by Hannah Hart were inspired by the culture, arts and history of Mexico, specifically Talavera and the Mayan gods. 

I like how she combines simple hand drawn illustrations with clean white ceramics to give a delicate and intricate finish. 

This paintbrush packaging by Simon Laliberté also creates a clever and eyecathcing design with a funny twist. Humour is something I wanted to include in my self branding to show how I don’t take myself too seriously and can have a laugh. 

I liked the choice of colour on the Mozi Vanilla and peach body bar, combined with yet more hand drawn illustrative effects and hand lettering, It creates a fresh handmade look, giving the brand a youthful and organic appearance. 

The design for these Pharma Herbs by Daria Fox combine a hand lettered typeface with bold colours and collage-effect photogrpahy. The brown paper stock used gives a more organic and eco friendly feel to the product packaging.  

British brand Teapigs use a similar effect for their packaging, combining illustration,  a screen print effect and brown recycled paper, their brand exudes a high-end, eco
friendly and quality feel. The tea bags inside themselves are equally as beautiful using real, flowers, berries and tea leaves in a silk pyramid bag.

William Whistle use a much more modern colour scheme with mainly black and white pacaging with a splash of an accent colour to compliment the flavour of the tea inside. More detailed pen and ink illustrations are combined with collage style photography to create really intersting and bright visuals on the front. 

This colour scheme was what inspired me for my own self branding. 

For my typefaces on my design I wanted to stick to a maximum of 3 different typefaces to keep the design simple, clear and uncluttered. 

I wanted to incorporate hand lettering to demonstrate my skills and interest in the area, however I felt it needed to be balanced out by something more bold and eyecatching, therefore I investigated some bolder typefces to print onto the front of my design so it didn’t look too feminine. I wanted a chunky woodblock effect so experimented with a few until I found one I liked for my header text. 

I downloaded a few different typefaces from DaFont to experiment with but decided I liked Hallo Euroboy the best as it is a bold but slightly soft gothic typeface, inspired by Morris Fuller Bentons classic “Alternate Gothic”. It was thicker and more compact than the other typefaces I looked at and thought it would create the most contrasting typeface to work with my hand lettering. 

If I was to revisit the project I would visit the Vernon Street buidling and experiment with the woodblock types they have in there to get a much more personal and unique finish. 

For the body text I wanted something clean, stylish and simple to read. 

My initial thoughts were that a sans serif font would be the most appropriate route to go down. I really liked the one I had seen on the app Vsco cam and found that it was VSCO Gothic Book. I could not download the font however it looked a lot like Avenir, so experiemnted with writing out the bodycopy in that font instead. 

After seeing how it would work alongside my hand lettering I felt a sans serif font looked to stark and unpersonal. I wanted to use something  a bit more intersting and quirky and chose ‘Courier New’ as it was a light typeface that gave a
typewriter effect which I felt made the packaging look a lot more inviting and personal. 

I experimented writing my hand lettering with a paintbrush and some ink, however found that I got a much cleaner effect using a felt tip pen. After drawing out my hand lettering I then scanned it into photoshop to arrange the composition and lay it over my wood block effect type. 

This was the end result. 

Before I could go any further with the design I first had to choose a colour scheme, Net  Design and the stock I wanted to print it on. 

For the Net I went to the supermarket and got hold of one of the Teapig’s packaging to base my design on and see how it was folded and produced. I undid the packaging and measured all of the sides and folds, then redrew the shapes using illustrator. 

This allowed me to then transfer the document into inDesign and use it as a template on the master page to fill in  the gaps with relevant content. I then concidered a few different colour schemes. I wanted the majority of the packaging to be black and white with an accent colour to lay over the combined typefaces on the front. 

This is where I realised I wouldn’t be able to use a coloured stock like recycled brown cardboard and that it would have to be white. 

I liked the idea of using a bright, happy colour scheme so experimented with blues and yellows. They looked ok but I felt they needed a second accent colour to complete the look.

That’s where I brought in the burnt orange colour. After I had combined the blue and burnt orange with the black and white I was happy with how the colour scheme was looking and decided to apply it to the rest of the box. 

 The content of my packaging was an important factor to consider. I didn’t want there to be huge paragraphs of text so I tried to keep the content as brief as possible, covering all the basics and sparking interest rather than giving everything away at once. Showing my skills rather than talking about them, I included illustrations to represent myself. 

I drew all the different elements and then layered and recoloured them using photoshop and illustrator. 

I wanted to show where I was from to represent my northern roots so did so by drawing things that the areas I came from were famous for like Buxton Water, The Bakewell tart and The Arctic Monkeys. 

Aswell as illustration I felt the design needed some sort of pattern to tie everything together, so I hand drew a scribbly zigzag effect to complete the overall look and feel of the leaflet. 

I then added my contact details and what social networks potential emplyers could find me on to look through more of my work. 

As an extension to this project I want to create a behance page or website and start getting my work out there. I recently set up and instagram account for my work but I need to actually start adding things to it to build a following. 

To one side of the box I added a drawing of myself done in fineliner and felt tip. There was a gap where my coat was so I decided to fill the space with a quote from world renowned graphic designer Phil Clever, which also added a splash of colour to that side of the packaging and balanced it’s overall appearance. 

For the actual teabags I was inspired by a design I had seen on pinterest where the paper part of the tea bag was shaped like a butterfly that could rest on the side of a teacup. 

I experimented by making one and thought it looked really effective. It also looked nice when I hand drew my name onto the wings, so thought it would be an appropriate way to link the outside of the box with its contents and carry on the letterhead I had used.  

This is the final product for my self branding. 

Overall I believe the Tea Packaging effectively communicates the key styles that I like to work in with Graphic design and my interest in the field of packaging design and branding. 

The Box and the teabags inside have a clear style with a consistent use of colour scheme, typeface and materials. 

The tone of voice is light hearted, easy going yet informative. 

One design flaw that I made when making the box was the positioning and size of the tab on the back which holds the lid closed. Due to this error it ripped when slotting the box together. This could be easily rectified though. The shape of the net being the way it was I didn’t feel confident using the crease folding machine in the downstairs digital print room. For this reason I scored the edges with scissors which created a rough, jagged finish on the edges and the corners. In the future I  will explore different processes I could use to ensure the design has a smooth and more professional looking finish. 

If I was to re-do the design I would ensure  that I made use of all of the facilities that the college has to offer including the letterpress, both woodblock type and lead as well as screen print  and mono print.  

I feel like there was some information left out of the design that I could have included such as design areas I felt confident in and my academic history, aswell as hobbies I enjoy doing. This would allow potential employers to get an idea of who I am as a person as well a s a designer.

Discovering my preferred area of Graphic design was hard for me as I had only known that Graphic Design was something I was interested in for about a year, so I felt that unlike some of my peers in the class I hadn’t found the area or style I liked to work in. However PPP has helped me discover my strengths, weaknesses and where my interests lie. 

Other than that I believe the colour scheme and overall design of the leaflet is extremely effective and printed out exactly the way I had envisioned it.