project 04 :: synopsis

This project was a lot of fun to work on! It was especially rewarding because of the collaborative aspect. It felt like real-life experience working with a team of creatives. We worked together through the brainstorming, brand identity ideation, sketches, and iterations, and each individual brought her own unique insight into the project.

Our final brand, Mod with Purpose, is a store that sells modern and contemporary furniture in East Village in Downtown, Des Moines. It is fresh, clean, and modern with a high-quality-yet-playful vibe. This is Mod with Purpose's philosophy: "Our purpose is to provide you with beautiful, modern furniture that will last a lifetime. In our designs, form always follows function. Every piece is made with purpose in mind."

It was exciting to see how our hard work in deciding on a style guide in the beginning of the project paid off in the end. Even though there were three of us designing the different pieces, they seem cohesive because of the visual system we developed. It was also helpful to remain flexible while we worked with different applications of the visual elements, as this process allowed our brand identity to be refined and ultimately strengthened.

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project 04 :: final critique

It was pretty exciting to all the different pieces of our identity system printed out!

Overall, we received positive feedback for how the elements of our system work together. Some constructive criticism included suggestions to solidify the use of our green tertiary color and refine our large poster because the different elements seem to be disjointed. 

project 04 :: initial designs

The total contents of this brand identity will include:

• poster
• exterior sign
• Facebook post
• Instagram post
• E-letter template
• letterhead
• envelope
• mailer
• business cards
• catalog

Because there are 3 people in our group, we split up these items and each used our predetermined style guide to inform our design choices.

Here's what I worked on:

e-letter

mailer – outside

mailer – inside

mailer envelope – outside

mailer envelope – inside

letterhead

envelope – outside

envelope – inside

business card 01

business card 02

business card 03

project 04 :: style guide

After a weekend of experimenting on our own with options for a logos and all the elements of our brand's style guide, the three of us worked collaboratively today to come up with a style guide for our brand. We discussed colors, textures, and logos... and then more colors, textures & logos.

Here's what we decided on:

overall style guide

colors

logo

examples of color/logo treatment

textures/materiality

project 04 :: sketches & iterations & color palettes, oh my!

Here's a quick look into the process that was this weekend.

Stay tuned for updates on a finalized logo & color scheme...

project 04 :: brainstorming

Today in class, we came up with a "staggering" amount of ideas.

We brainstormed name ideas and visual elements to create the identity system of our brand.

Here's the resulting whiteboard:

As you can tell (or maybe not), in the very left-hand bottom corner is where we stumbled across the name we decided to go with: Mod With Purpose.

Not only do we like the sound of the name and its slight play on words, but we also think it accurately portrays three aspects of our brand image:

• our store sells modern furniture and has an overall modern vibe 
• hence, "mod"
• our store represents creators of furniture that is durable, functional, and made to last
• hence, "with purpose"
• we know we put out well-designed, quality products, but we don't take ourselves too seriously
• hence, the play on words

project 04 :: project statement

The intent of this project is to develop an original name and design an identity system and collateral materials for a new Des Moines based company selling contemporary and modern furniture.

I will be working in a group of 3 designers. To begin, we will go through a brainstorming and research process. We will think about our audience, the location of our store, and the store's purpose as we brainstorm ideas for store names, logos, colors, and other visual elements of the identity system.

Once we nail down a working style guide (having determined typefaces, colors, and textures to employ throughout our system), we will divide up the pieces that need to be designed and all work to create a unified system of collateral materials.

We'll critique and help refine each other's work each time we meet, so as to maintain a consistent brand identity.

At the end of the project, we will have developed a brand identity for this (faux) new contemporary and modern furniture store opening in Des Moines and the collateral the goes with it.