Creative Brand Strategy - Project 2

29/04/21 - 21/05/21 (Week 5 - Week 8)

Atiqah Farzana Binti Syalleh Karimyee (0336740)
Creative Brand Strategy
Project 2

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LECTURE NOTES

Week 5: Creating Touchpoints

Brand touchpoints can be defined as a the interactions and exposures that a consumer can have with a brand. Every interaction a customer has with your company is essentially a touchpoint from website to a retail space, direct mall to a product, all of which play a role in the overall customer experience and your brand's eventual perception.

The touchpoints that are worthy of our priotised attention are those that will have the most impact on your business: the "Quick Wins" and the "Difficult but noticeable".

Fig. 1.1 - Touchpoints Mapping

Week 6: Moodboard

A moodboard is a condensed collection of visual assets that represents a brand's visual identity. It can contain inspirational examples of photos, colours, typography, quotes, patterns, shapes and more that make up a cohesive direction for a brand.

Moodboards are a valuable tool for:

        Inspiration - brings things to focus; company attributes, vision, emotions

        Affirmation - supports the brand identity by translating concepts like brand values into tangible visual.

        Guidance - helps guide the art direction to accurately reflect the brand

        Communication - eases the communication between the director, designer, and client for early decision marking.

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INSTRUCTIONS

Module Information Booklet:

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PROJECT

Project 2 - Ideation and Design Direction

Week 5 - Week 9

(30/04/21 - 27/05/21)

Part A: Ideation

With the Brand Touchpoints we identified in the campaign proposal’s Customer Journey Map, we will continue to research for application references that represent or symbolize your proposed campaign. We should select only the most relevant touchpoints (unique and portrays the subject in every context) to build our Critical Application List, and include a short description for each application.

Part B: Design Direction 

We have to articulate the art & design direction by developing a set of mood boards or Style scape, comprised with colour palettes, typography, graphic element, photography & etc. 

The contents to be included are:

• Campaign Logo – Wordmark 
• Color Scheme / Color Palette – Primary & Secondary (color meaning & symbolism) 
• Typography – Headline, sub-headline, body text 
• Image-Making – Illustration / Pattern / Graphic Element / Photography

Here is my final submission for project 2:

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FEEDBACK

Week 5 

General feedback: Public holiday (Nuzul Quran).

Specific feedback: No feedback.

Week 6 

General feedback: Using keywords for your brand will lead you to the right art direction.

Specific feedback: My planning for the touchpoints is very detailed, so now I should start planning the timeline for each touchpoint. For example, posters and Instagram ads generally take a shorter time to create compared to an app or website. For the app UI, I have to plan out the navigation and wireframe, however, it does not have to be an actual working app.

Week 7 

General feedback: It is ideal to design various series' of posters to communicate each activity of the event, and they should all be synchronized with one/few key art. Ms. Low shared with us a few IG accounts that have nice feeds which are: theslowfactory, theclimatelockdown, and hellorexkl. These are just inspirations for our brand's IG feed, such as the post arrangements, content, visual mixture, etc.

Specific feedback: The logo depends on whether the key visuals have a lot going on. If the key art is elaborative, then the brandmark should be simple, and vice versa. Essentially, it should be balanced. Ms. Low suggested that the overall brand identity shouldn't look too childish because my target audience is directed towards families and teens as well.  For my event guide schedule, Ms. Low said that there isn't much purpose for a physical copy as the schedule would already be on the app, unless the printed copy could be a multi-purpose (folds into a board game, origami, etc.). Ms. Low said she couldn't really see my sub-headline type to fit with my headline and body text fonts, to which she recommended me to try and make a poster using all 3 fonts so I can get a better look as to how they all come together.

Week 8

General feedback: No class (independent learning week).

Specific feedback: No class (independent learning week).

Week 9

General feedback: -

Specific feedback: The strategy is clearly based on the campaign's USP, the touchpoints are well planned. ideas are memorable and create a lasting impression. Good progress on wordmark design, be aware of illustration inspo could be too child-like.

REFLECTION

Experience: Week 5 (29/04/21); Public holiday (Nuzul Quran). Week 6 (06/05/21); When seeing my classmates' touchpoints, I was able to envision what it's like to actually be at their campaign and experience the feel and ambiance and such. Week 7 (13/05/21); I feel like the choice of touchpoints is very important to each brand, and there would be a few subtle touchpoints that are specific to each one. For example, my brand's target audience is mainly families (specifically the kids) so having poster adverts near schools would be very appropriate. Week 8 (20/05/21); Independent learning week. Week 9 (27/05/21); Very cool to see everyone's art direction and how they'll execute their campaigns. 

Observation: Week 5 (29/04/21); Public holiday (Nuzul Quran). Week 6 (06/05/21); I noticed that even though all our campaigns are different, most of my classmates had a lot of the same touchpoints. Week 7 (13/05/21); I found that having a lot of touchpoints isn't necessarily a good thing. The phrase "quality over quantity" could be applied here, because having specific touchpoints is more effective in drawing in the targeted audience, instead of targeting just any audience. Week 8 (20/05/21); Independent learning week. Week 9 (27/05/21); After presenting my project 2 and seeing everyone else's work, I was able to see all the work we put in over the past few weeks and it was very rewarding- seeing how we were able to create a whole concept and brand, and soon the identity too.

Findings: Week 5 (29/04/21); Public holiday (Nuzul Quran). Week 6 (06/05/21); I found that there are many ways to advertise and promote something, especially online because the online market is able to reach a bigger audience more efficiently than an offline one. Week 7 (13/05/21); I understood the importance of having a visually appealing social media presence for a brand as it attracts the audience more. Week 8 (20/05/21); Independent learning week. Week 9 (27/05/21); I felt that having the touchpoints and moodboard helps a lot in visualising my campaign and it acts as a foundation for our brand so we don't fall off track when doing the identity.

FURTHER READING

What is Branding? 4 Minute Crash Course by The Futur

Week 5 (29/04/21) - Week 6 (05/05/21)

This four-minute clip that was extracted from the full podcast episode features Marty Neumeier as he explains everything about what branding is - and what branding isn't. 

Firstly, a brand is not a logo. 

A brand is not a product. 

A brand is not a promise. 

A brand is not the sum of all the impressions it makes on an audience. 

A brand is a result–it's a person's gut feeling about a product, service or company. It's in their heads and in their hearts. A brand is your reputation.

3 Minutes of Pure Branding Gold by Brian Collins by The Futur

Week 7 (13/05/21) - Week 8 (20/05/21)

Brian Collins, the chief creative officer and co-founder of Collins, is one of five designers who has received the American Master Design award, with a history of astounding works such as EOS, Dropbox, Vitamin Water, Coca Cola, and Spotify. In this brief video, he shares a few tips and tricks on what it takes to be a good brand.

    1. The 3 things designers have to work with is:

• Familiarity
• Surprise
• Context

    2. You have to be open to criticism. 

If people respond to your work - be it good or bad - it means that they found it worthy to be talked about. Your work must be interesting enough to capture people's attention, because it means that they care.

    3. Use poetry within strategy. 

Poetry doesn't describe an experience; good poetry is an experience. With the right, powerful words you can change someone's perspectives about the way they might see something.

    4. A brand lives in two places: Authenticity and relevance (or remarkability, and extraordinary, amazing). 

If you're brand isn't extraordinary, no ones going to pay attention to you.

    5. Design doesn't always have to be timeless. 

As long as it's a good expression, and whatever your intentions may be, then it counts as a good design. 

    6. Bring your heart, sincerity, and clarity 

    7. A designer must anticipate the needs of their client. 

The key word here is anticipate. It's a future-facing value that takes on what might people need, what they would like, and what they would want - and to create it for them before they even know it. Our job as designers is to put clients into the future as quickly as possible.

How to Create A Great Brand Name by Jonathan Bell

Week 8 (20/05/21) - Week 9 (27/05/21)

With over 300 million brands in the world, it's getting harder and harder to create a unique name for your brand for it to stand out in the market. 

    1. Select the type of name you want

There are 7 different categories of names:

• Eponymous - takes homage to the creator (Disney, Adidas)
• Descriptive - describes the brand (American Airlines)
• Acronymic - acronyms of the full brand name (Kentucky Fried Chicken = KFC)
• Suggestive 
• Real - uses real words (Uber; means an outstanding or supreme example of a particular kind of person or thing)
• Composite - combining two words together (Facebook, RayBan)
• Invented - Changing, adding, or removing letters for impact (Kleenex, Pinterest)
• Associative - reflects the meaning back to the brand (The Amazon is South America's largest river, thus the brand has the largest selection of everything you need)
• Non-English - brands from different countries may use their language for the brand name (Samsung means 3 stars in Korean)
• Abstract - has no meaning, but relies on phonetics for a strong meaning

    2. Decide what you want the name to say

• Descriptive + Functional < Idea + Emotion

Creating a brand name that holds emotion is much better than a name that tells the audience directly what the brand is about. Think carefully and ask yourself "what is your big idea?"

    3. Check if that name is available

Before you launch your brand, you should check to see if anyone else has used it first (also check for the domain name). You should also check if your name means something rude or offensive in other languages, to save yourself from creating a bad reputation.