OUGD602: Studio brief 2: Design Presence: Ideas

Here are my initial thoughts, I was just getting ideas down to see how I could start going about designing for my own personal branding.

During summer I spent a short amount of time thinking about how I wanted my design presence and I came up with the name Mt. Everitt. It's a play on words of Mt. Everest, and is a name that has been often used towards me when I tell some people my second name ("What like, Mt. Everitt?" "...Yes..."). Although quite silly, I believe its memorable, and quite different, as a lot of desginers just use their full names. The idea is that my name looks as if its the name of a mountain, which gives the user a sense of something great, or something powerful.

I originally liked the idea of having my name drawn by hand, so I tried sketching out a few ideas:

After drawing out a few ideas, I came to the conclusion that I wanted my name to be quite bold but symmetrical, and decided that using a specific type face would give me a much more professional and quality feel to my identity.

I chose a font that was bold and would give more emphasis on the power of the name.

I sharpened off the edges of the letters, and cut down the I to make fit more appropriately with the rest of the type.

I then came up with the idea of changing the spikes of the M into a mountain, which would also be able to used as a logo.

I played around with the negative space inside the mountain, but it didn't work with the clean design of the font.

 I then decided having snow covering the tips of the M may work well:

I took the name I liked and applied it to different colours to see what it looked like, I also applied it to some business cards

Whilst designing the business cards I thought about how i'd prefer it if someone gave me theirs, and I always feel like business cards are quite big. I decided that I would have my business cards small and long instead of being the normal size. As well as being small and easy to pick up and put in your pocket, the size also makes it stand out from other business cards and creates a sort of unique style.

After having a small crit with my house mates, they told me that I should maybe try just making the M and the E capitalised, and maybe even changing the font. They also said sticking with one colour scheme and not having several different colours will make it more memorable and less confusing.

I decided to change the font completely into a serif font. It's still bold but just adds a bit more formality and sophistication to the logo, making it come across a lot more professional. I used a  font called GrandeeCP, but edited it so it was more suitable for me.

As you can see I changed the diamonds, which were used as dots into circles. I also changed the heads in the T's from being quite sharp to being flat. And I changed the serifs from being squared off to being pointed. I wanted the font to be more rounded and friendly, rather than quite harsh and sharp.

I applied the name to my business card, and decided to go with a clean grey colour.

I then created a logo, which consisted of the V being flipped around, which create a mountain with a tree, and then also out of that I drew the end of a pencil, which also looked like a mountain. I added an extra tree, and blended these together and came up with this logo:

Out of the logo I also created a pattern, which I may be able to use as the inside of an envelope.

Here is my final business card. When I come to print the actual thing I want the stock to be a nice grainy matte, with the Mt. Everitt embossed. I also want the edges of the business card to be black.

After leaving the logo for a day and coming back to it I realised that I need to make some changes. I really liked the font chosen, I just thought the mountains needed something a little more, and were not reflecting what my work is about. Ive decided to sketch out some mountains and I am going to place them over the text to see how it looks, I like the idea of the mountains being more hand drawn, as I want it to reflect my illustrative style.