Since I already had branding last year, I decided to revisit and I noticed quite a few mistakes and areas where I could improve my branding on. The first thing I tried to fix was my logo. I didn’t want anything new, but rather to improve the monogram and make it proportional and not so lost and random at places. Below you can see my logo development and the very last logo is the new version.
I also ended up improving my business cards and actually decided to change my brand style too. The initial idea was to design the website at first on Webflow for me so I could use it for business, but I decided that starting with the website might become very tricky since it’s a big thing to do and I thought it would be the best to actually make a business card design, which is updated in my case. This way I could get the tricky bits out of my way.
Here are some considerations I’ve made for my design:
Has to be bold and contrasting,
has to reflect my design style,
has to fit my community of practices and incorporate subtle elements,
could be abstract, but trendy,
most likely a brutalist style with a black background since it’s mainly used on my designs, (it would be idea to find a place that is interested in this design in particular, so it’s best to show it off),
a switch from very cold blue to lighter colours would be beneficial to come across as friendlier and welcoming.
Below you can see my previous business card designs:
Below is the development of the new business card design:
Since business cards are something that needs to be printed, I had considered how it would look on CMYK rather than RGB. I didn’t think much of it at first since RBG is the main thing I will be using anyways, but despite it, business cards need to be printed, so I had to try and see what works the best. The main issue I had was the purple as it’s either too pink or too blue, so I have tried adjusting it quite a few times and tried different tones. I thought since a business card is the only thing that is physical, it shouldn’t be too much problem for me, but regardless of that, I still tried to do my best.
See below the experiments for printing:
I have also tried to print out the business cards and surprisingly other colours weren’t as bad as they have appeared on the software, but the main issue was the purple itself on the information side in comparison to the black background, so it definitely is something that needs to be changed before I order them to be printed out. Most likely I will have to play around a bit in University Library to test and print multiple times till I find the best option.
Curent final business card designs:
Email signature was another thing I have wanted to sort out, but I was not able to make anything nice regarding it in my opinion. Most of the software seemed to be requiring pro versions for which I don’t really see to be included many features to be worth getting, but the other issue is that it doesn’t allow to add typefaces and it is mainly because emails that are being sent in different platforms might get their code changed if it’s a certain font and this information could be lost, so these websites which do them don’t allow to change most of the information for it. These examples here were the closest I was able to get. I think it would be worth investigating ways that could potentially help to embed typeface fonts and create a custom signature that would work, but it’s something that is not the highest priority for me at the moment and a somewhat functional email signature can be enough at the very start, though might risk not being consistent.
Branding inspo:
links:
https://helen-template.webflow.io/#project
https://faction-template.webflow.io/
https://dune-template.webflow.io/
https://dune-template.webflow.io/contact
https://www.behance.net/gallery/86467777/Personal-Business-Card
https://www.behance.net/gallery/143199959/Wayne-Liao-business-card
https://www.behance.net/gallery/102438769/personal-identity
https://signature.email/guides/can-i-use-google-fonts-in-email-signatures
https://mysignature.io/editor
https://www.hubspot.com/email-signature-generator
