OUGD602 - Personal Branding - Brand Guidelines

To ensure that my branding is as consistent as possible I started the process by producing a small brand guidelines booklet. This includes instructions on logo use, typefaces, the colour scheme and patterns. I will be able to refer to this in the future when producing other outcomes and use it to also give to collaborators. I researched into a variety of professional brand guidelines to get a rough idea about layout and content. Some that inspired my outcome can be seen below.

As I already had a logo that I was content with, the first main focus was picking a typeface. As my work is very modern and the majority is digital, a sans-serif typeface was more appropriate as they are less traditional in appearance and more widely used for on-screen design. Because of this, I opted to use the DIN type family for my branding - the typeface became a standard for traffic signs, street signs, house numbers and license plates in Germany, essentially highlighting that it is extremely legible, and the letterforms are very simple, allowing my branding to appear clean and slick. As I used Cargo to build my final website, explained in the following section, I used DINosuar Light for all web design as it came with the platform. For all digital, editorial and print work, DIN Pro Light is to be used.

Due to my portfolio being very colourful, I wanted to have a subtle, stripped back colour scheme that accompanies my work. By having a greyscale scheme, I feel that my portfolio is able to be the main focus of attention. A four-colour palette of white, light grey, dark grey and black was chosen to represent my brand. Patterns were also included in the guidelines. Due to the isometric design of my logo it can be repeated diagonally to create a pattern. This could be used for collaborations and adding character to my branding.

The guidelines were printed on high-quality stock and bound. Photographs can be seen below.