Purpose
For my project I worked to brand Marissa Lynne’s new business. She has been working on starting her company for a short time and was needing someone to do branding for her! Marissa Lynne is a business that helps small businesses. She focuses on helping them build up their social platforms and provide feedback on how to improve.
My branding includes logos, a color palette, typography, and basic graphics/Stickers. There is some variety within the logo so that she can use one that fits the content that she is making.
Along with working with my client Marissa, I worked with my mentor, Heidi Esplin who has had experience in branding and graphic design for years and has had experience with the designing process. She helped guide me through this process.
Project
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges that I faced was knowing how to brand. I have never done any branding before and knew that It would come with some challenges. I had to look up some different things that are encompassed in branding to know where a good place would be to start!
Another thing that was hard was designing for someone else. When ever I make something for myself I know what I want, but when I was working on content for Marissa I started getting negative feelings towards the work I was doing thinking that she wouldn’t like it. It was all a mental game and after I started sending her more things to recieve feedback, she loved it! It gave me more confidence in what I was doing.
Process
The first step I took was finding a client. Once I found Marissa and her company I started by learning about her company and what she needed. I talked with her and started making a plan.
I then went to my sketch book and wrote down everything she was looking for. From colors, to what she wanted in a logo. Then I got to work! I started with picking colors in Adobe Illustrator. I wanted to pick the colors first so I could use them when I was designing other elements!
After I picked my colors I designed some logos and stickers! I implemented my color pallet into each of those. Using the colors in the designs helped for them to look like they belonged together. In some of my stickers I used text. This is when I started to use typography and made decisions about what text types to use. I talked with Marissa and gave her updates all along the way. She came to me and asked if I could make a story that she could post of her social accounts.
I then was able to take all of the work that I have done and lay it out nicely so that you could see every thing that I have done for Marissa.
Overview
Overall, there was a lot of hard things during my first branding experience but I am grateful that I had the opportunity to practice and to work with a client. I was able to learn things that I wouldn’t have been able to learn without this experience. When ever I get another opportunity to brand for a company and client again I will be better prepared because of this experience.
Insights
One of the most important things that I have learned through this is to be confident in my work. I would find myself getting to caught up in if my client will like this when I should have let my creativity take over and trust the process. I am learning to be a designer and to take criticism. It makes me better and gives me another perspective on the project.