Type: University Project
SCROLL DOWN
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT
Funk N Soul 97 is a fashion design and modelling business run by and promoting the services and products of Tia Semi. Through her brand, Tia aims to inspire and influence her audience through her dedication to incorporating both her Samoan heritage and culture as well as the community of those with disabilities into her company and it's brand. Tia and her team hope to destigmatise the idea that those with disabilities can't also work hard to fullfill their dreams and succeed, which Tia has continued to prove through her many achievements so far. Importantly, whilst achieving this she also gets to work doing what she is most passionate about, modelling and designing fashion.
CONTENTS OF THIS PROJECT
CLIENT PROJECT BRIEF
When I began this project as a university assignment, we were given multiple project briefs of people that we could choose to work with. This unit focused on helping with branding for clients that had disabilities and were trying to get their businesses set up and running. Looking through all the briefs, something about Tia and her story drew me towards wanting to work with her out of the people that were available and help her with her brand. In the client project brief that I was given by Tia and her team, it gave details on her business/organisation, the purpose of her business, brands that she liked/disliked and more. This was all very useful information to give me a good idea of what Tia's business was about and how I might design for her from the beginning.
MEETING THE CLIENT
Before I got to work on the designs for Tia's brand, my university class and myself went down to Fremantle where we met with all our seperate clients that we had chosen to work with. Multiple students in the class had chosen Tia and her brand as the project they wanted to work on so we interviewed Tia and her team collectively asking them questions we had worked on in the recent week that would aim to help us with designing the perfect brand for her. The idea of interviewing a client was very daunting as I had not yet done so, however it felt much more relaxing interviewing in a group where I could bounce off the confidence of others in the group especially after we all started to settle into the conversations and realised how friendly Tia's team were.
This experience was very helpful when it came to designing in later weeks and finalising a brand for Funk N Soul as we were able to ask questions that we couldn't get the right information for from the client brief or online research. Tia was very energetic and enthusiastic about her brand (especially that we MUST use the colour pink in it) and seeing her personality in person definitely helped me to know how to translate this into the brand itself to reflect her accurately.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Tia's Funk N Soul brand pride themselves on being as eco-friendly as possible by using environmentally friendly resources and materials for the creation of clothing and other apparel, as well as enlisting a hand-made process. In the fashion industry, eco-friendly clothing is becoming increasingly more popular over the years due to the increased interest in organic material, awareness of the environmental benefits of using eco-friendly ways to produce products and in the vegan lifestyle . This has seen a 47% increase in sustainable clothing according to Forbes in 2018. Eco-friendly fashion label Reformation has surged in popularity of clothing brands, providing comfortable and fashionable clothing that are made of organic materials. This demonstrates that this trend is increasingly rising and becoming more successful in the fashion industry, a potential achievement that could be reached by the Funk N Soul brand
COMPETITOR ANALYSES
When developing a brand for a company it is crucial that the designer has full understanding of all elements of the type of industry that the company is a part of. Part of this is researching competitors of the brand that I am designing for, in this case other fashion designers and models that are promoting themselves and their products. From this I can find out what features work in their brand that the audience resonate with and make them want to keep interacting with the brand, as well as weaknesses that I would want to avoid when designing for the client. Over this process of the research phase, I looked into three different possible competitors to Tia's brand and analysed based on: their purpose, overall design, colours, typography, graphical components and critical analysis.
EMPATHY MAP
Empathy maps are very useful in the design process for developing a further understanding of the 'ideal customer' and how they view the brands and companies that share the same industry as the one I am designing for. This can give an insight into what the actual target audience want to see improved or want to see less or more of in the industry.
IDENTITY SUMMARY
The identity summary wraps up all the data that has been collected regarding the ideal audience/customer base for the brand, their own personal brand and other competitor brands. This data can now be generalised into a summary that will be used to evaluate and help make design decisions further on in the process of creating a new brand for Funk N Soul 97.
PERSONAS
Personas are customer identities that can be used in the design process to represent the majority of the brands known target audience through traits, ages, genders, etc. that the design needs to be more directed towards.
VISUAL INVESTIGATION
When developing a brand it is important to research and explore different design elements that could be of potential use in your own brand design by investigating general design themes , colours, typography, etc. as well as design elements that are used in similar brands and industries to compare.
The colour pink was a very highly requested theme made by Tia and her team as it is Tia's favourite colour and therefore the branding colours of the company as well as Tia's clothing colour choices. I wanted to reflect this throughout the design, so I did some research on all things pink and how I could incorporate this into the design of the logo, branding and touchpoints.
The brand of Funk N Soul is mainly fashion and modelling driven so it is important to look at other logos that are also from this industry. Investigating and researching similar brands logos can bring advantages in finding out what works in branding in this industry and what doesn’t work as well as giving the designer ideas of what to avoid in terms of accidentally copying logos, etc. I also wanted to look at the logos of brands that Tia also loved personally to put more of her personality into the branding and logo.
LOGO DEVELOPMENT
Tia and her team had a logo that was given to us initially that they really loved and were happy with as it had aspects that reflected the most important themes of Funk N Soul and their current brand.
I wanted to freshen up Tia’s logo but without taking away these essential elements or message behind the logo itself.The two elements I really wanted to focus on keeping in the final design was:the portrait ofTia and the custom drawn butterfly that is very close to Tia’s family and her heritage/culture.
As I had central elements that I wanted to focus on implementing into the logo design for Funk N Soul as well as a beloved previous logo to refer to, the process of designing the final logo revolved more around retouching these elements and arranging them into a final design that I felt best represented the original logo and message of the brand. After finding the right balance between the original logo and a new design, typography was important in finishing up the design, providing the brand with font that represented the brand and fit with the new design. I wanted to make sure the font fit with the bubbly, fun brand of Funk N Soul and represented Tia’s unique and excitable personality that is the soul of the company. I experimented with some different fonts that I felt had those same qualities.
Tia's Original Logo
FINAL LOGO DESIGN
The Funk N Soul 97 brand focuses on the self-representation of Tia’s modelling and fashion design businesses, making her the soul and heart of the company. To portray this I wanted her portrait to be centered and the largest element in the logo to catch the attention of viewers and make it known that this is the face of the company and who the brand is all about. Pink was the main theme of the branding so the final logo has been created using a monochromatic pink palette, using white for other elements in the logo such as the title font and the butterfly. The element of the butterfly was important in the logo as this represents the important focus on heritage and culture that is held by Funk N Soul both professionally and personally. For the logo to flow, I used the curve in the ‘L’ of ‘soul’ to match up with the curve of the butterfly so they parallel each other in the design. The placement of the portrait to the left of the logo was done in order to symbolise Tia and her brand looking towards the future and endless possibilities. This was achieved using the contrast of the dark pink of her hair on the left and gradually getting lighter towards the background to show the brightness of her future ahead of her.
BRAND GUIDELINES
TOUCHPOINTS
Touchpoints are means of ways the brand design can be utilised for interaction between the company and the customer or target audience.There are many varieties of touchpoints that can provide this interaction that range from physical touchpoints such as printed and promotional materials to spreading awareness of the company through word of mouth.
For Funk N Soul 97’s touchpoints, I have designed physical touchpoints that can be used for marketing and promotional means as well as advertising the products and services provided by Tia and her team. All the touchpoints designed follow the pink, floral branding that has been outlined previously in the process book in order to create a coherent theme across all the touchpoints.
My first touchpoint is the business card that has been designed as a way to build the client base of the company. Funk N Soul is mainly a word of mouth business. Although they do communicate with customers and sell products through online resources, markets and stalls are where their main business comes through so I wanted to give them a simple yet fun business card that they could pass out to customers and potential customers when out and about.
The creation of the thank you cards have been designed for the customer service aspect of the brand. Each design made by Tia is hand made and unique to the customer so I wanted to pair this personal touch to the Funk N Soul brand with a thank you note. This also acts to build reviews and give more information to the customer on Tia and what her brand stands for, which will help promote the company and its message.
The clothing tags have been introduced as a fun, creative way to advertise the clothing designed and hand made by Tia herself. It was important to keep this quality about her fashion line and incorporate it into the clothing tags by using ribbon to attach the tags, giving more of a DIY feel to the touchpoint instead of security tags used on clothing in big fashion stores.
