Ellie Bird

TY3BP Individual Report


Contents
1 Working as a team
1 My individual contribution
2 Research
2 Logo and colour palette
4 Illustrations
5 Merchandise and printed outputs
6 My perspective on the project
6 Thoughts on the branding workshop
6 Reflection
7 Bibliography
Working as a team
Using online communication tools such as Google drive and group-chats meant that we were able to discuss things quickly and regularly and stay connected as
a group. Having frequent communications allowed us to keep everyone else up to date with our individual progress. It also helped us to give swift feedback on
each other’s work to keep the project progressing quickly and positively. Gaining regular feedback from other team members on my individual work helped me to
improve my design skills and also to build my design confidence. Furthermore, I also learnt new Illustrator and InDesign skills from working with them; this included
the shape builder tool on Illustrator and helpful InDesign short-cuts.
Allocating specific areas of research and design work to different members of the team allowed us to efficiently manage our time and share out the workload
evenly – two factors which furthered our ability to work together successfully. I think that this worked very well for our time management and communications
skills as we met the weekly feedback deadlines that we set as a team and it also meant that no two members of the group were working on the same sections at
once. We split up the workload evenly between all four of us for the research process as well as the design process.
My individual contribution
The four main parts of the project which I actively contributed to were:
• The competitor and charity sector research
• Helping to design the logo and creating the colour palette
• The illustrations
• The merchandise and printed materials outputs
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 Research
To start the research process, we identified the brand as a care-giving brand archetype, due to it being a charity, with its driving desire to protect and care for
others (Peña-Bickley, 2007). Identifying the correct brand personality was an important stage for us as according to research, brands presenting the strongest
personalities are more likely to perform better and resonate longer with consumers (Roberts, 2010). During the research stage at the start of the project, I worked
on identifying and researching Parenting Special Children’s competitors. This was a really interesting start to the project and was a crucial part of understanding
the sector and charity branding, both necessary in order to carry the project forward and design appropriate outputs and visual guidelines. We wanted to create
a brand that consumers can strongly relate to as when this is achieved, a self-brand connection is formed. Furthermore, when such a phenomenon takes place,
“consumers can serve as advocates for the brand by actively promoting it via word-of-mouth” (Kemp, Jillapalli and Becerra, 2014). For Parenting Special Children,
consumers promoting the charity through word-of-mouth is very important for reaching parents who are struggling and may not know that the charity exists.
After identifying the competitors, I carried out a visual analysis of their social media pages to identify their brand, how they used their branding and how they
connect with their users. Experiencing the other charities’ social media and website pages was really useful as it showed us which factors of branding and UX
worked successfully and which parts didn’t. For example, we learnt that most competitors (such as Autism Berkshire and Dingley’s Promise) only use two core
branding colours, as well as an icon, as part of their logo and they have separated their websites into sections for different users. The use of two core colours
makes the brand clearly identifiable, setting it away from competitors. This is important for Parenting special Children as they offer a unique service for children
and young adults, setting them apart from the competitors. By the end of the project, we had implemented all three of these successful factors into our own re-
branding, as we knew from our research that they were effective for the users of the charity.
Figure 1: Showing the process of my logo designs from left to right. I started off by using
the concept of hands and hearts, as they have helpful, loving and connecting connotations.

Logo and colour palette As my designs developed, I introduced a parent and child figure to the design to represent
the aims and ethos of the brand.
Moving away from the research phase onto the design process, we worked as a team to design and develop the logo, as a brand’s logo is extremely important
in enhancing their image (Kaur & Kaur 2019) . We had long group discussions regarding what type of iconography we desired and conducted a survey as a team
to gain an in-depth understanding of what people thought of the current logo Parenting Special Children were previously using. We discussed the questions
to be used in the survey together and each team member sent the survey out to as many friends and family members as possible to collect a large amount of
responses. We did this to strengthen our argument to the client for the need of a new logo and I personally think it was a very effective way to show the client the
depth of our research.
After analysing the survey responses, Alex, Caitlin and myself came up with a large range of initial logo sketches to start the process. During this phase, we gave
each other constant feedback on which logos were more successful and from there we developed our logos individually (see Figure 1). The final logo (see Figure
2) was the result of experimentation and a combination of Caitlin’s and my own designs. The far-right logo designs in Figure 1 show how I developed Caitlin’s logo
from two individuals in a shape with a straight edge at the bottom into two people in a heart – which the client gave a positive response to.
As well as the logo, I also experimented with different colours to create the brand’s colour palette (shown in my initial logo designs to the left of Figure 1). I took a
while to perfect the colour palette due to the significant impact that brand colours have upon a brand’s personality (Seimiene & Kamarauskaite, 2014) Therefore,
looking into the semiotic meaning behind colours, as well as how effective they looked when placed alongside each other, helped me to select the three core Figure 2: The final logo design – showing a child and a parent figure connected
colours for the brand. With this basis we then discussed the initial colour selections to slightly alter them to the final shades that we presented. by the same heart. We decided upon this idea as it symbolises the special
connection between parents and their children. As well as this, we chose the
rounded typeface ‘bree’ as it fits with the care-giving brand archetype.
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 Illustrations
Alongside Caitlin, I also helped to design a selection of the illustrations as content for Parenting Special Children to use on their social media channels, as well
as part of branding designs. I researched into the services that they offer and looked into the kinds of illustrations that other charities use – such as Mind and
Macmillan. From this research, I concluded that the same illustration style must be used across all the drawings in order to create a strong, coherent brand identity.
Thus, it was important that Caitlin and I communicated well to ensure we achieved this. The illustrations are a large part of the visual identity of the charity and
needed to match the colour palette and feel of the brand. Once I had digitally drawn my illustrations, I then sent them to Caitlin to put her own touch on them,
including the shading and offset outline; this ensured that they all fitted together as a consistent set (see Figure 4). Working on the illustrations helped me to build
my digital drawing skills on Adobe Illustrator and working alongside Caitlin taught me new skills such as how to apply appropriate shading to digital drawings.
Figure 3: My original illustrations (before we limited the colour palette and I
worked with Caitlin to add shadows and highlights).
Figure 4: Our final illustrations – using
the brand colours to create consistency
and a clear visual identity.
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Merchandise and printed outputs
In addition to contributing towards the design of the logo, I was in charge of designing the printed materials (such as the leaflet and letter heads), merchandise and
output digital mock-ups (Figure 5). In order to design the leaflet, I had to stay in regular contact with both Alex, designing the website, and Caitlin, designing the
social media content. This was important as it ensured I was designing the leaflet to look coherent with the other outputs being designed by my team members
– creating the strongest possible visual identity for the brand. Designing the leaflet utilised my editorial skills as well as my design skills to layout important text,
whilst also crafting the leaflet to look welcoming and interesting to parent users looking for reliable, welcoming and professional support. As well as the leaflet, I
also designed the letterheads, which again required me to use my editorial skills. Creating mock-ups in Photoshop was a really enjoyable part of the project for
me as it brought our designs to life and we began to see how the brand would actually work in real life. In addition to this, creating the mock-ups was a crucial final
part of the design stage as it highlighted any problems with the designs when they were implicated as physical outputs. I also designed a collection of stickers and
t-shirts for Parenting Special Children to use as merchandise to visually advertise the brand to the public. I experimented with different designs for each by testing
mock-ups using the brand illustrations and then by only using the logos – which we decided were best for the stickers.
Figure 5: Mockups of the printed materials and an
example of the stickers.
 My perspective on the project
When re-branding Parenting Special Children, I understood it was important for us to capture the community sense of the charity by creating a warm and
welcoming brand which also looked and felt professional. Having an autistic cousin made the project personal to me and I discussed the project in detail with my
family to gain perception and ideas from their real experiences. My aunty and uncle are also doctors so this gave me deeper perspective into the health side of
diagnosis and how parents can be left in the dark after finding out their child is autistic. Growing up closely with my cousin, who has severe aspergers, has given
me a deeper perspective into life growing up with a child with autism and special needs, which was beneficial for creating a brand for Parenting Special Children.
Understanding how hard life can be for these parents, I knew it was important that we created an appropriate visual identity for our users to feel they could
approach the brand to feel safe and understood.
Thoughts on the branding workshop
The branding workshop was a really helpful and enjoyable day. I was given strong advice about how to create a brand identity and I was able to expand my
knowledge on different categories of brand personalities. I found it genuinely beneficial for the project – particularly learning about the importance of refining a
brand’s vision, mission and values, as well as thinking about the golden circle and semiotics being selecting colour choices. The information and skills I learnt from
the workshop can be applied to any branding work I do in the future as a designer – which is what made the branding workshop exceedingly beneficial for me.
Alongside the workshop day, the talk from Helen Noel was also very stimulating. Listening to Helen’s experience in the branding industry and looking through her
examples of brand guidelines assisted us when we had to create our pitch document containing the brand guidelines we had come up with.
Bibliography
Abbing, E.R. 2010. ‘Brand-Driven Innovation: Strategies for Development and Design’. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.
Airey, D. 2010. ‘Logo design love: A guide to creating iconic brand identities’. Peachpit Press; 2nd edition.
Peña-Bickley, J. 2007. ‘Brand 101: 12 Brand archetypes.’ Marketing ideas 101. (Online article) Available at: https://marketingideas101.com/featured/
branding-101-12-brand-archetypes/ [Accessed on: 09/12/20]
Roberts, C. 2010. ‘Exploring Brand Personality through Archetypes’. (Online dissertation) Available at: https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.
cgi?article=3046&context=etd [Accessed on 12/04/21]
Seimiene, E. & Kamarauskaite, E., 2014. ‘Effect of brand elements on brand personality perception’. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 156, pp.429-
434.
Kaur, H. & Kaur, K., 2019. Connecting the dots between brand logo and brand image. Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration.
Kelly, M., 2017. ‘Analysing the complex relationship between logo and brand’. Place branding and public diplomacy, 13(1), pp.18-33.
Kemp, E., Jillapalli, R. & Becerra, E., 2014. ‘Healthcare branding: developing emotionally based consumer brand relationships’. Journal of Services Marketing.

Reflection
Pp.126. (Online article) Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JSM-08-2012-0157/full/pdf?title=healthcare-branding-
developing-emotionally-based-consumer-brand-relationships [Accessed on 13/04/21]
Overall, I have learnt a great deal from the branding module this term which I can utilize in other modules and will also take away with me as a designer after
university. I really enjoyed working with Alex, Joanne and Caitlin and I learnt a range of hard skills from them whilst operating together as a team. Working on a tight
weekly schedule has also improved my soft skills such as time management and communication, as well as my ability to work well as part of a group to create a
coherent visual identity. The project involved a large amount of scheduling and communication, which I think we all achieved very effectively. Splitting the project
into individual work roles help us to accomplish this – which is an aspect I will also take away from this project. Seeing our designs come to life at the end of the
project was really rewarding and achieving positive feedback from our client Tess Eagles made all our hard work worthwhile. On top of all of this and the skills I
learnt from the branding day and talk from Helen Noels, this has been my most enjoyable module of the course so far and I am now very keen to look into branding
as a career option after university.

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