"Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career."
In the final project, we were tasked to create a brand identity for either our own personal brand or for the university department, NUS CNM. I decided to pick the first option because I felt that learning more about personal branding could really help me to understand myself and aid my career in the future.
At first, I was quite unsure about where to begin with so I started by brainstorming about what I wanted my brand identity to speak about me. I wanted my brand to be authentic and meaningful. I also knew that the best personal brands are usually very specific and niche. The message and content are usually memorable but targeted. Hence, it is important to have a genuine brand message with a focused target audience.
Initial Reflection & Ideation
Here, I will be reflecting on how I can build my personal branding based on my target market, personal attributes, skills and what sets me apart from other people. Firstly, I thought about which audience I should target. For instance, I asked myself questions such as: "who am I likely to give my business card to? who are the potential interviewees that I will be passing my resume to?".
As I am highly interested in doing social media marketing in the future and I am personally interested in fashion, my potential employees are those working in the fashion industry/retail industry.
Then, I thought about my personal attributes and technical skills. I think that my strength lies in my meticulousness and I am also a very organized person when it comes to my work. I am also tenacious and thrive in an environment that challenges me.
Carrying these ideas, I knew that I wanted my brand to highlight my strengths -- resilience and perseverance -- to my potential employees, or those working in the fashion industry.
The Logo
As with all branding projects, it starts with the creation of the logo. I wanted to translate the idea of resilience and perseverance into my logo. Hence, I came up with 3 different sketches to explore what the logo could be.
My first idea was that the logo would be an abstraction of a plant (weed) with a combination of the letter “V” in my name. The weed symbolizes resilience & bouncing back from challenges/adversity.
Subsequently, I improved on the first sketch to create another design: this time, the logo shows more clearly the letter V. The logo remains simplistic and clear in showing the letter "V" and the symbolism of resilience through the use of the weed.
In the last sketch, I drew a person hanging onto a plethora of stars. The act of the person having on represents resilience while the star symbolizes my dreams and passion for fashion.
In the tutorial forum discussion, I had gotten the feedback that most people liked the second and third sketches the most but felt that the sketches needed a pop of colours and that my name itself could be added to the logo. Taking these suggestions into consideration, I came up with my final logo design.
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| Final Logo Design |
The logomark consists of 2 main elements: an initial V, which represents my name and a weed growing on the side, which relates to the self-image of being resilient. Similar to how weeds grow back even after farmers and gardeners get rid of them, the use of a single stem of weed reflects the resilience of the plant. It portrays the process of how the plant grows back stronger than before in the face of adversity.
As seen from the picture above, the main logo consists of 2 components which are (1) the logomark and (2) the logotype. The logotype is simply my name written in the typeface, Cambria. The logo was created in illustrator where I used the pen tool and pathfinder function.
The Typography & Colour Palette
Similarly, I tried to translate my personality and self-image into choosing the colours and typography. I chose a mild, soft colour palette as I felt that it reflected different facets of my personality.
The Colour Palette
Individually, each colour communicates a different aspect. The Dawn Pink colour communicates tenderness and gentleness, which highlights my quiet but patient spirit. The brown and earthy colours are much like the earth; they are associated with resilience, dependability and security, which are aspects that I want to highlight in my personal branding.
The Typography System
For the typography, I chose Cambria as the primary typeface and Quicksand as the secondary one. I felt that Cambria was a beautiful and elegant typeface which gives the overall brand a more sophisticated and professional look. Paired together with Quicksand, the fonts give a polished feel.
The Business Card
For the business card, I tried to infuse the logo and visual identity into the business card to give an overall feminine but professional feel to the overall design as well. I had the idea to make the business card to mimic a clothes tag. I felt that this mimicry shows that I have roots in the fashion industry, which ultimately extends my personal brand to include my passion for fashion.
The Resume
Likewise, I made the resume minimalistic but visually appealing. I played around with space to visually highlight certain information. Learning from the previous assignment on information design, I played around with the way I presented certain information. For instance, I used charts and progress circles for the "language" and "skills" section.
In "clients", I also made presented the projects and clients that I have worked with before in logos that are of the same branding as my personal branding. This was achieved through the use of Illustrator where I used the image tracing function to make the logos more assimilated with the overall resume design.
I also made the "experience" section into a timeline so that the information is linearly and visually easy to read.
The resume also makes use of my picture on the first page. Photoshop's functions were used to help adjust the image in line with the brand's colour palette. Firstly, I adjusted the highlights and value of the blacks and whites to recover the details of the photo and to achieve a more crisp picture. Then, I raised the exposure to brighten up the picture.
Here, I played around with the tone curve and split toning to ensure that the image aligns with the brand's colour palette.
The Brand Style Guide
Lastly, I created the brand style guide on Adobe Indesign. Weiving all these elements together, I played around with the central branding to achieve the overall look and design of the brand style guide. Using InDesign, a grid of columns, gutters, and margins was created to anchor the layout of the publication, ensuring that it was well-organised and aesthetically pleasing.
Using Indesign to create and follow the guidelines
As such, I have created a brand style guide that encompasses the professional and elegant image that I was trying to portray whilst translating the essence of the overall brand and submitted it as the final project for NM3217! Overall, it has been a really fun and fulfilling module :)
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