Many years ago when I was an art director, the firm I worked for commissioned a logo redesign by an outside designer. Then, to create a corporate identity using the logo design, my company brought the job in-house.
I assigned the branding job to my best designer. She had come to work for me straight out of college, and had been in her job for about six years. She was uncertain of her abilities with such a high-profile job. I told her I had the utmost confidence in her ability, and I encouraged her to break the job down in the following way to make it more manageable. You may find these suggestions useful in your own work, creating an identity package and related collateral for your own organization.
Collect Samples of Printed Collateral You Like
It’s always good to have a swipe file. After all, no design is truly new. All the better if you can grab several pieces from a company: perhaps a business card, an envelope, a sheet of letterhead, a brochure, and a larger work like an annual report.
Design magazines are useful, too. I get GD USA each month. This print magazine often showcases brochures, print books, websites, packaging, large format printing, etc., from various companies. It’s a great education in itself just studying all the photos, to see how other designers have produced coherent identity packages. Other design magazines I’ve found useful have included Print and Communication Arts.
In addition, you also might find it useful to buy a book on the fundamentals of design (grids, typefaces, white space, color usage, etc.). I’ve been in the field for 36 years and I still study the fundamentals. I make it a habit. It reminds me to focus on the few simple elements that underlie every great design.
Collect Samples of Custom Printing Work from Your Field
Samples of work you like are useful, but it’s important to also create your business identity within the context of other publications from your competitors. If you understand what they are doing graphically, you can make your work stand out while still retaining the flavor of the industry.
Collect Paper Samples and Color Swatches
It’s important to start your designs with a few things in mind, such as balance, eye movement, repetition, focus, and the hierarchy of importance. I usually start in black and white. When I like the direction a custom printing job design is taking, only then do I add color and consider paper choices.
Keeping coherence is important. I wouldn’t suggest printing most of your pieces on a white stock, for example, and then shifting the flow and printing a piece on a tan or vanilla stock. Keep ink color choices and paper colors and finishes for all of your organization’s publications in mind when you create your corporate identity. The goal is to make every commercial printing job recognizable as coming from your business.
Start with Drawings Before You Boot Up Your Computer
Having too many variables can be confusing. Personally, I usually start my design work by drawing out a few page spreads on a sheet of paper with a pen or pencil. These are sketches. I don’t commit much time to them, so I can throw all but the best in the trash. This loosens me up. Starting a design on a computer can sometimes lead to over-committing to a less desirable design option. This also keeps me focused on line, form, and balance before I introduce color into the design. You may want to try this.
Make Mock-ups of Two or Three Different Designs
I usually try to come up with a few different designs, perhaps a treatment that focuses on an image and then a type-only treatment, or a more modern and a more formal treatment. Giving the client, or the owner of your company, two or three different options is smart, particularly at the beginning, before you spend a lot of time going in one direction that may not be acceptable to the decision-makers. Make the mock-ups “finished” (or “polished”) enough to convey your goals, and make sure your boss knows you will be sharing your progress in various stages to ensure “buy-in.”
Design Multiple Items Together
It’s all too easy to make one item perfect and then find out your concept won’t work elsewhere. The treatment of a logo and corporate identity has to work in large and small formats (signage and business cards, for instance), in black and white and color. (Maybe you still need to fax information to clients. If so, your identity must be graphically sound in black ink or toner as well as in your chosen PMS corporate colors.) Also, since everything has to work together, designing an overall “look” for all of your custom printing jobs is prudent.
Spread Everything Out to See Whether Items Cooperate or Fight Each Other
Just as it makes sense, when you’re designing a print book, to produce laser copies of selected pages (cover, frontispiece, table of contents, dedication, and a few page spreads) to see whether there is coherence and flow in the overall work, it’s a good practice to spread your design mock-ups around on a table or on the floor to see how they look together.
You may find the computer more efficient. It depends on what you’re used to. But the idea of seeing everything together from a bird’s eye view bears thought.
Be Mindful; Look at Design Everywhere
Particularly while you’re doing a rebranding or corporate identity make-over, look closely at everything you see, from print design to web design to packaging. Look at billboards, magazine ads, brochures. Go into department stores and see how the large format printing, hang-tags, color usage, even the lighting, all go together to create a single unified whole. Let all of these observations work on your subconscious. When you like something you see, always ask yourself why it works. Deconstruct it. Look at the colors, typefaces–everything. See what you can learn and apply to your own rebranding project. Your final design package will be all the better for it.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Letterhead, Promotional Products, Stationery Packages.
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