Introduction

For the past few months I have been working with a company called Southview Mini Warehouses. They have asked me to create a consistent brand image to be shown over their online presence. That includes a basic brand package, redesigning of their website to meet the new brand image, and updating their social media page through marketing.

For the last seven weeks, I have dedicated around 10 hours each week to this project. I had a set deadline to accomplish each task needed to produce what you see here today. This could not have been done without organization and detailed planning.

I have been juggling many hats. Those hats include being their social media manager, brand designer, web designer/graphic designer. Eventually, my goal is to become a graphic designer in hopes to be a creative director of a design firm down the road. Handling a project that has multiple moving parts has given me the confidence that goal is possible.

Music: https://www.bensound.com

Creating the Brand

Goal: Create a strong recognizable brand that shows the company’s core values.

Time Count: Around 22 hours

When I began to create their brand, I started with collecting information about the company. I needed to know what the owners of Southview Mini Warehouses wanted it to stand for. After gathering the necessary information I created a brand story. The rest of my design choices were based off of those details.

The company did not have a logo or a sketch of an idea they wanted. The process of creating a logo started out with considering the owners’ ideas and suggestions. From there they chose one variation of my sketches. Then the refining process started. I sketched and created vector variations of that logo that eventually lead the final logo you see below.

The next process is the color scheme. This was an interesting part of this project. The owners originally like the cool color scheme below. Near the end they wanted to add some warm colors to the design but still keep the cool color scheme for the website. It was not much of an issue because everything was digital, and I could just replace it with the new logo.

 

Below you can look through the brand package to see how I incorporated the company’s brand personality into the logo and color scheme.

Web Design 

Goal: Make a user-friendly design that highlights the company’s brand personality.

Time count: Around 25 hours

This portion of the project took a lot of thought and design decisions. Their original website contained only the basic information in a format that was hard to read and follow. The website lacked content such as features, deals, and other information that would convince a potential customer to contact them.

I wanted to focus on making the website as simple and personal as possible. Those characteristics highlight the values and brand personality while focusing on the missing content mentioned above. After careful research and understanding I sat down to start putting my ideas to the page.

I started with a simple sketch of both the desktop view and the mobile view. After that I turned the sketch into a wireframe on Adobe XD and sent that for approval to the client. After the approval, I started working on the icons and illustrated the visual of the location. The process of creating the icons was the same as the logo. I took my chosen sketches of the icons to Adobe Illustrator. I created block shape icons for the desktop and banner shape ones for the mobile version. The purpose was to help the flow of the mobile view.

To summarize important pieces of the website I would mention to look at each page. On the ‘home’ page you will see that I changed the page to focus on the most important information, the variety of units. When the potential customers come to the website, they don’t have to go looking for what they need. This allows the process to be simple just like one of the key brand personalities.

The ‘about us’ page you can find that I added visuals and brief words and sentences to enhance the retention of the understanding of the about page. The ‘contact’ page features an option for the potential customer to submit their contact information to be personally contacted. This is also to increase the personal feel of their core value, which is “helpful attitude to assist your needs.”

Below you can see the details mentioned above. See how I incorporated the orange color to the call to action.

 Social Media Rebranding

Goal: Create a unified Facebook Page of the new brand and create content.

Time Count: Around 24 hours

Lastly the final piece was to update their Facebook page. That included using the appropriate social media logo and creating a cover photo to reflect their values. All the photos except for the overhead shot were taken by me and edited in Photoshop. After that I asked the client what type of content they wanted to share. They did not have an idea other than special deals. I created a content calendar and with their approval of the paid and organic ideas I got started.

Overall my goal was to create and provide high quality content that matches the new brand. That resulted in higher engagements and reach. That can be seen on their Facebook page here. Take a look.

 

Conclusion

 

I had planned to not only design but create the website. This mistake was on me. I took on a project that was too big for the time frame I had. The clients are okay with this and I told them I plan on creating them a website down the road. This was a lesson I learned and will never forget.

Overall the project was a success in the client’s eyes as well as in mine. I set objectives and goals, created a brand identity, improved social media page views and attracted attention, and lastly designed a beautiful website.