Brand design company inc [Beginner's Guide]

Last updated : Aug 27, 2022

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hey guys what's going on Shawn with Butler branding I thought it would be kind of cool to give you an inside look at behind the scenes of part of our process and specifically how do we go from strategy to design a lot of times there's a bit of mystery you know how do you go from a concept to something tangible or something that you can actually see when it comes to graphics and so today we're gonna be sitting with one of our designers Chris Orosco who's the mastermind behind a lot of the designs you've been seeing from Butler in more recent days and we're gonna show you a couple of different approaches that he takes because not every design is the same sometimes there's design for a logo or for an ad or for a publication and so let's kind of pick his brain to see what he's thinking to go from strategy to design come on inside all right guys meet Chris Chris Orosco he is one of the newer members of the butler team and he's the man responsible for a lot of the design work that's been coming out of Butler in more recent days Chris how long have you been doing design I've been designing for about seven years three years professionally okay and so Chris I I put out an interesting ad when we were looking for a graphic designer for help and basically I came up with the ugliest ad design I could think of and I wanted someone to basically tear it apart and make something better and Chris's response was actually the best out of all of them and so when I saw the things that Chris looks for in design that's definitely one of the things that we wanted to bring in-house and so I thought it'd be kind of cool to get a behind-the-scenes look at his process because it's one thing to strategize with clients what conceptually a website should look like or a brand identity system should look like and we try to do our best to take like abstract words or abstract ideas and input words to them and then give them to you and then somehow there's the mystery or magic that you convert that into something that looks beautiful and it's on point with the brand and so I'm interested to see your process and I think that's kind of what we're gonna do today so there's different types of designs that we're gonna be talking about so the first type is what I think is your favorite type of design right which is brand and branding okay so why is it your favorite I just love the freedom that it gives me I think it allows me to show the best that I can do okay and what is like the worst soul-sucking type of work you can usually production like stuff that you don't really get to do anything creative that's just mostly just plugging in information and clicking buttons mindless someone with no talent could do it gosh yeah okay so and we're gonna be using an example today for an actual client of ours mid India Christian mission and so when if you know nothing about an organization so this particular company is we're doing a redesign for and so if you know nothing about an organization what do you as a designer like to receive from the creative director I think a good creative brief is like good design it should be clear concise and to the point I think it varies depending on projects obviously you know some projects require more more of a descriptive brief but I think overall should be short and concise okay and for for this particular project since it was a redesign we typically have three methods of design that we could do for a redesign when we we go by mild medium or spicy right mild is like pretty close to what they already had but just a revision medium is a little bit of distance between what they had more close to what we would like them to be if when we identify their brain actually some of the spices just like completely forgetting everything that we thought of before just starting from from scratch and so for this one we landed on which type of design it was the medium is a medium right so it was a little bit of a departure from what they had but still memorable because they had quite a big following and we didn't want to have too much of a shock yeah so so when you got the brief what is your what is the very first step like what do you do with that so before I even get on the computer or even start sketching I I'll spend half an hour - now we're perusing design books or whatnot you know what's cool about being the designers that are so many sources of inspiration whether it be going outside taking a walk looking at observing the environment we're gonna add signs advertisements after that I will tend to go to the old sketchbook where I can you know refine my ideas okay so for them for permit India we we have a pretty extensive strategy document it's like 60 something pages and then part of that includes brand attributes and what we're looking for in regards to the design so did you like to sit on that for a day and then just think about ideas before you went to sketching or honestly I briefly looked at it okay and then I'll just like I say go on to inspiration and then just exploring ideas okay and so is this your sketchbook with some of your first sketches yes sir so walk us through some of these this is the very first one yeah so this is pretty close to what we actually landed on - yeah so I think there's a misconception that a lot of designers think that they can't sketch because they're not a good artist but I think as long as you get the essence of the idea on paper that's good enough for you to go forward with an idea very cool and so this is the very first sketch that she did so yeah I always say this is a really terrible inaccurate of India but I did manage to you know get the idea okay so in in in this were you thinking like this is gonna be like a medium type of design or a medium type of change from what they had before medium yeah yeah so what was it what were some of the faults that you saw it there we'll logo and what were you trying to address or change I think you look too generic and they didn't stand out from you know the competitors okay cool so so then you went from sketch to what to illustrate to illustrator so yeah once I get a few ideas usually I acts the first and second ideas usually those are ideas that somebody else has come up with so once I'm ready I'll take it into illustrator and it's just a matter of execution from there on and this is a picture they're their old logo from mid India Christian mission right so like I said very generic and doesn't really stand out amongst a crowd yeah and then one of the things that we noticed is that the icon it's really detailed it's like a detailed outline of India which if you're looking at that on a mobile phone or if you're looking on smaller devices it's really hard to see what that is and so you you got that you said okay if we're gonna go with a medium design something that's kind of similar and memorable from their primary brand but still closer to what we were looking for these were your initial skips right first thing that came to mind is try to utilize some negative space okay and so you didn't scan this in and then copy it in till it's right you just went straight to illustrator that's rig

Thanks for your comment Rusty Williams, have a nice day.
- Eboni Rous, Staff Member

imagine that you want to build a website for your brand what do you fill out the empty web pages wait to make this website your website whatever you end up putting there is the basic set of brand assets you need to build your brand hey you guys welcome back to watching out in number one place for people who love design art and all things creative you are watching dancier and products channel my name is laszlo and in this video i want to talk about the brand design elements you need as a designer creative an entrepreneur of any kind to be able to brand yourself or your business i already have made a video in which i gave you some generic conceptual branding tips but this time i want to cut through the noise and give you a very simple no-nonsense list of 5 brand assets you need to build your brand identity system in 2021 let's jump straight in first of all you're going to need a logo obviously a logo is the visual focal point of any brand you already know that but what you might not know is having one logo in 2021 is not necessarily enough there are way too many platforms out there each doing their own thing and every single one of them has their own restrictive formats and visual systems in place so what you'll find is sometimes your logo just won't work within a given space a logo that looks good on a big screen might not look good on an apple watch and vice versa now big brands noticed this and they reacted to this phenomenon by putting scalable responsive logo systems in place if you have no idea what i'm talking about here let's look at this image brands like chanel or disney have their basic logos on the left and then they have all these simplified variations giving them the option to scale their logo marks down whenever a specific platform requires it or they just feel like it's needed and i do the same thing here i start every video with this nicely typed out dantier and volog logo but wherever i feel like it wouldn't be legible to use this big one i use this little monogram version instead this is something i feel like you should definitely keep in mind if you are designing a logo for yourself or if you are commissioning a logo designer scalability is the way forward assets number two colors now colors in my opinion are the most important visual assets you can use in your brand more important than the logo i probably don't even have to show you the logo but if i just put this little color swatch here you know exactly which brand i'm thinking about right now aren't you that's the power of color in terms of advice i would say most brands can and should be boiled down to two maybe three different color shades so try to build up a palette like this whenever i design a brand i start off with a main color which we usually end up using for the logo then we're going to need a background color which complements this logo design and after that usually i put in one more shade in place a somewhat secondary color which helps me to fill out the visual gaps between my main two color shades whenever it's needed we associate certain colors with certain emotions and moods which is something you should be playing with and also use them to create a concept and further tell your brand story when i built the dmb brand for example i very consciously went with this monochrome gray and white color scheme because i know that both jaclyn's and my creative design style when it comes to client projects is very rich crazy color for sometimes selling very outdoor ideas so when it comes to client presentations and showcasing projects we will want the client work to shine through our presentation slides while the dmb branding itself should be very tame very subtle in the background complementing and professionally packaging up all the proposed craziness we do this for our videos as well by the way dark air muted down background richer more colorful foreground i don't know how much of that comes across the camera but you get the gist try to build a concept with color okay branding is at number three is phones and typography now in 2021 if you look at hub most brands approach type and fonts it is quite uninspiring we are getting less and less experimental with the phones we use for two main reasons which i already kind of touched on one of them is legibility the screens are getting smaller so we have to adapt and two all these restrictions introduced on all the different platforms we are using for branding on instagram for example if you want to put text onto a story there is only so much phones that you can choose from now this has led to this weird situation that seemingly all the brands are using the same five six phones in their branding so if you're ever in doubt just use one of these two fonts are usually enough for a brand one for headlines and one for body copy and to be honest since this is the brenda set which is the easiest to replace and change later on i wouldn't sweat too much on it when you are just creating your brain i think typography is like fashion going around in circle like trends so i hope i don't hurt any typographer's feelings when i say i don't think this is where most people should get creative within their branding in 2021. by the way i don't mean to disregard designers and brands which are using typography in a very clever way in terms of design elements because on that front there is amazing work being done i'm talking about strictly body copy here which leads me to my fourth asset which i just going to call the visuals because what secondary visuals you need is very subjective let's say you are going for a very corporate professional looking identity in which case you can look into different photographic style or icon design while if you are going for a more youthful edgier kind of brand you might consider using illustration as part of your visual branding if you are selling physical products you might need packaging in which case you can look into different textures or better design for your products if you feel like you've been restricting yourself in terms of the fonts and typography this is the category when you can get really creative two things to bear in mind whatever you create should be a combination of however you want to appear in your market and two what your target audience expect a brand like yours to look and feel like like since i do digital illustration and icon design it makes sense that dante and embalk as a brand has its own custom icon set but i think you can really bend the rules to your way here like let's say you're a one-man operation having a little etsy shop selling handmade goods in which case it would make sense if your brand itself would have a handmade craftsy personalized fear to it as well if you need a starting point for this visual as i always tell people just think of what are you going to use as instagram highlight covers you know besides your logo what are you planning to put on your facebook banner or the back of your business card those are the type of supporting visuals i'm talking about here yeah and last but not least the be-all and end-all your website do you need it yes of course you n

Thanks uso55m your participation is very much appreciated
- Eboni Rous

About the author

Eboni Rous

I've studied topos theory at University of Lynchburg in Lynchburg and I am an expert in recreation ecology. I usually feel giggly. My previous job was physician's office nurse I held this position for 4 years, I love talking about leather crafting and association football. Huge fan of Selena Green Vargas I practice equestrian and collect vintage cars.