20th September - 4th October 2023 / Week 4 - 6
Alana Sofia Othman / 0353451 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Creative Brand Strategy
LECTURES
Lecture Slides 3
The Creative Brief
Frame of Reference
- Brand Positioning Statement uses a y/x axis scale that determines the placement of the brand with its competitors. There will be 2 determining factors to represent the y/x axis. (Eg. for music festivals 'y' = music genre and 'x' = range of different cultures)
- Brand Positioning Statement should include:
- Target Customer
- Market Definition
- Brand Promise
- Reason to Believe
- Brand Positioning Statement template:
- For (target customer), (ambassador) is the (market
definition) that delivers (brand promise) because only (ambassador) is (reason to believe)
Big Idea
- A campaign’s big idea is the overarching message that underpins all elements of a campaign in order to resonate with the target audience
- Should be linked to the brand's objectives to ensure relevancy and impact
- Should be a key message on all touchpoints and not just one platform
- Works best when communications are about guiding and influencing not telling
- The idea should be simple and have a narrow focus to maximise its execution.
Lecture Slides 4
Touch Points
What It Is
- A brand is customers gut feelings. They get a specific feeling from experiencing the brand touchpoints
- Brand touchpoints are what the customers interact with (Eg. retail space, social media, posters, etc.)
Creating Touchpoints
- Step 1: Mapping out touchpoints through a customer journey map and stages of when customers interact with the touchpoints
- Step 2: Prioritize your touchpoints based on the potential for impact & the degree of ease for implementation
- Step 3: Add your prioritized Brand Marketing activities and touchpoints and map them
along the consumer journey map
Moodboard & Design Direction
What a Moodboard is
- Collection of visual assets that represents the visual identity
- It directs the artistic style, tone & manner of the visuals
What a Design Direction is
- A more detailed version of the Moodboard
- Contains styles for:
- Logo
- Colour palette
- Typography
- Visual Style
INSTRUCTIONS
Task 2: Ideation & Design Direction
Ideation
Detailed Plannings
Attachment 1.1. My Campaign Details Progress 1 (Week 3 - 4)
Attachment 1.2. My Campaign Details Progress 2 (Week 4 - 5)
In My Campaign Details Progress 1, I wrote down my communication goals, key messaging and a
few options for campaign name & tagline. I liked the idea of using
'corner' in my name/tagline as George Town is (almost) in Malaysia's top
left corner. However, my campaign names at this stage used 'Penang' because
I forgot that George Town would be the city of my campaign, not Penang, the
state.
At this stage, I also listed down my touchpoints and what I want to achieve
from each touchpoint. I found this important to organise now to remind
myself later down the road what the objective is for each touchpoint as it
could later get confusing or things may get lost in translation when
designing. I wanted to ensure that everything served a specific purpose,
especially following the customer journey map stages and what my target
audience may want/need to find at specific touchpoints and stages.
In My Campaign Details Progress 2, I came up with new campaign names,
expanded more on the details and added collateral items as an extra
touchpoint. I listed out the details of each post for the instagram social
media platform. I decided to work on 12 posts instead of 9 simply because
based on previous experience, most mockup templates show 9 full posts with
3 cut off at the bottom. So, to avoid the awkwardness with the template
later on, coming up with 12 posts right off the bat is easier.
As for collateral, I decided to have some as the welcoming gift kit to
new residents who moved to George Town. A totebag and pin would just be
cute little gifts that people tend to like and use, allowing it to carry
on as the city campaign awareness and representation. The calendar was
something I thought might be useful as sly promotion as it becomes a good
way to notify new residents of all the upcoming events happening that year
without really screaming it in their face. As for the zine, I thought of
how alot of my classmates were doing brochures as their touchpoint, and
although I wasnt keen on it, for a brief moment I considered copying them
just because I was not sure what else to do. However, after I thought
about it more, I thought it would be quite dumb to give a brochure because
it makes sense to give that to tourists, why would residents want/need
that? I figured a city zine might be cuter and more useful because it
could cover past/future events and happenings all around the city and push
the city brand further.
Design Direction
Moodboard Ideas
Attachment 1.3. My Campaign Moodboard Ideas (Week 4 - 5)
I came up with two different design direction ideas for my
campaign. I wanted to take inspiration from Melbourne's city brand and how they are
able to be versatile to accomadate to all their different collaborations
and applications. The first idea I was trying to lean more into a typographic style
in order to be flexible. However I was not entirely sure how to push the
typographic style and where I wanted to go with it and found it being
quite a mess.
Then, came my second idea. I figured maybe I could try tap into the
nyonya side of things as inspiration as well. I figured I could modernise
and make simper patterns that were somewhat nyonya inspired. I figured its
an easier design direction that is quite set and stable however I was
still more attached to the first idea.
After feedback, Ms Lillian helped me solidify my design direction by
pointing out that I can somewhat combine the ideas and take items from
both moodboards. I could have the idea of nyonya but not nyona
resemblance, with the ways of repetition, shapes and balance while merging
it with my typographic heavy idea. Thus, my final idea having a merge of
both design direction ideas. My typography and colour palette expanded as well after feedback,
extending to other typefaces that would allow me variation for the
typographic heavy fun design and colours that could be vibrant and
balanced out with some of the more darker/dull tones.
Expanding Ideation & Design Direction
Ideation Expansion
Attachment 2.1. Sitemap Planning (Week 5 - 6)
 |
| Figure 1.1. Final Sitemap (Week 5 - 6) |
I planned my sitemap following the objectives and user map stages. The website needs to be organised so that potential residents doing research can see everything they need under one section while existing residents can find whatever they may need easily as well. It also needs to be organised in a neat way that avoids repetition, for example, both potential and existing residents may need to look at the public transport map'.
Design Direction Expansion
Attachment 2.2. Extra Typefaces Eliminations (Week 5 - 6)
Since my typefaces list would be more extensive than just brand
typefaces, I had to go through and find more to use as decorational
fonts. I stuck with fonts I already have on my desktop as I did not want to spend forever looking online, downloading thousands and end up not using them for this project or ever (I call searching for typefaces online the supermassive black hole where you just continously get sucked in and lose yourself). I dumped all my image references that used a lot of fun typefaces and heavy type design style into AI and went through all my fonts 1 by 1 and selected ones that could work or look interesting and funky enough. I eventually got stuck with way too many to even count, so I went through 3 rounds of eliminations and finally ended with 21 extra typefaces.
The first round of eliminations, I took out the ones that just obviously would not work because they looked bad or were too similar that they serve no function, see 'Eliminations Round 1'. The 2nd round, 'Eliminations Round 2', I compared the typefaces with my brand typefaces and took out the ones that would not match well my brand typefaces. These happened to be the ones that were too curvy, too thin, too straight or just did not seem to fit well.
'Eliminations Round 3' was the same thing but I took more time and consideration when seeing the typefaces next to my brand typefaces. I tried to cut down as many as possible because I figured 5-15 extra typefaces would be a good number. However, when I was looking at what I was left with (about 32 left at that time), I found it harder to eliminate because I was not entirely sure what would or would not work until I started designing, which was not going to happen yet. I also was not sure what they should look like, thick? straight? long? wide? a lil curvy? There was also different reasons and ways I could see some being paired.
So, I decided to force myself to atleast narrow it down to 20 even so I could have the variation with purpose while not being crazy with way too many. I ended up getting it down to 21 and decided that was good enough as each of them had a little visual personality that I quite liked and could see using. I figured that I can always narrow them down further when designing later as I would not actually have to use all of them.
Final Submission
George Town Arts City Brand
Attachment 3.1. George Town Arts City Brand Slides (Week 6)
FEEDBACK
Week 4
Ideation
Detailed Plannings
- More details of touchpoints (socmed: think of each post and what they will show)
- Email onboarding thing can be part of the website instead of an email
- Think of more touchpoints (maybe starter kit?)
- Campaign name ‘corner’ feels like telling them to isolate themselves in a corner
- “The corner of inspo” as tagline is ok
- ‘Penang kreatif’ is decent but feels like a very safe choice
Week 5
Design Direction
Moodboard Ideas
- Agree that Idea 1 is abit all over the place and doesnt seem to have a specific direction. It's more of a few different things I like/want
- Agree that Idea 2, if too nyonya feel, can backfire because I have been trying to stay away from that identity. However, I can use it as inspiration, like the balance and geometry and patterns
- I can introduce some images and have the style type heavy with the merge of both ideas to create 1
- Typography idea 1 is good and more interesting. I can have them as brand typeface while having a list of other typefaces as decoration, treating them only as decoration to my visuals
- Logostyle being a wordmark and dynamic is decent
- Brand voice & personality is good and matches my brand values. Will also work well with the new direction
- Come up with logo ideas
- List out all the typefaces I will be using as decoration
- Come up with set of patterns and shapes
Ideation
Detailed Plannings
- GTA is ok, it makes sense to my campaign with 'Arts' as GT about all kinds of arts
- Good idea to have the zine with the welcoming kit
- Calendar is good but make it 1 big poster calendar so it won't be too time consuming to create
- Sketchbook & Notebook if only cover, is simple enough, if the insides of it, can take too long, esp with other items to design
- Other collateral is simple to design and good enough
REFLECTION
Experience
As always, the journey was a up-down-up emotional roller coaster ride. I began this task really excited and confident because I knew I had a really fun idea with plenty of things to cover since I am already inlove with George Town and know enough bits and pieces. The emotional down part was when I moved from the campaign ideation stage to the design direction stage. Back to the emotional up part of course came after feedback where I was able to find my foot again and be excited for what I was doing.
Observations
I struggled with coming up with a design direction at first because unlike most of my classmates, I forgot to think about it earlier while doing the planning of the campaign. Although being quite lost, I forced myself to push through the block and confusion and come up with another option. This allowed me to not waste too much time as I was able to get feedback that allowed me to reach a more firm design direction that incorporated both ideas.
Findings
I learnt that eventhough you're stuck on an idea, it does not mean you should completely abandon it or keep working on it either. Sometimes it's best to find other solutions to see your options and how you can keep moving forward without wasting too much time.
FURTHER READING
City of Melbourne (n.d.) City of Melbourne [Online] Available at: https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Pages/home.aspx
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