Background/overview

Inspired Earth Design is a landscape and garden design company that orchestrates and produces beautifully constructed garden layouts. They carefully curate landscape designs to match their customers’ exact needs and find a comfortable balance between beauty and sustainability. The clients, Emily and Jude, work closely with their customers to create a garden design that matches their overall style and aesthetic. The Inspired Earth Design team won gold at the RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival, where they competed in designing the perfect garden that reflected ‘Americas Wild’. This real job aimed to create an instantly recognisable logo highlighting the company’s expertise in garden design in a modern yet feminine style.

Restated Brief

The main deliverables for this project were a primary logo and a logo mark, which will accompany their new website launch. Upon meeting with the clients, we discussed their brand, target audience, previous logo, and aspirations for this project. This meeting allowed me to gain an understanding of who the clients were, what they wanted, and how I could achieve this for them.

Target Audience

• Women who have a disposable income, and an interest in sustainability.
• Customers who have a love for nature and preserving the environment.
• eco-conscious and environmentally friendly people may want to create a garden that maximises their space to plant and grow fruit and vegetables. As well as gardens that support biodiversity, rainwater harvesting, and looking after insects.
• Clients who take pride in their gardens and wish to turn their house into a home.

Research

Before completing the design process, the main starting point for this project was to conduct a thorough analysis of Inspired Earths Design company. For example, what their primary goals are within the logo, who their competitors are, and the foundation of other logos within the gardening sector.

Competitors

Initially, looking at their competitors’ logos, the designs roughly followed the same format. The logos are pointy, mainly typographical, and use a vivid lime green. These brand identities are bold, modern, and somewhat masculine. The client’s general idea is to create a brand that visually stands out compared to these and emphasises their feminine, gentle, and hands-on qualities.

Other Gardening Logos

Upon researching other logos within the garden design and landscape community, there are several common themes that each logo possesses.

• Garden design logos usually use a vivid shade of light lime green and feature elements from nature, such as plants, leaves, trees, and flowers.
• A common recurring word/ theme is garden, landscape and green.
• There are not many typographic logos only using the company name or the initials of the company in the logo.
• Serif logos make the company appear older and slightly out of date, they are not modern, new, or fresh.
• Circular logos are very popular in gardening as they help enhance organic shapes.

Initial Design Ideas

• A modern timeless logo that can be used for an extended time.
• Emphasise the feminine touch within the logo that represents the client’s attributes and qualities that help them stand out compared to their competitors.
• A use of gentle and elegant typography that is clean and bold but doesn’t take away from the logo mark.
• An elegant and subtle colour scheme that reflects the personality of Inspired Earth Design and works cohesively with their website.
• The logo mark should consist of the brand’s initials, ‘IED’.
• Explore the use of natural scenery, such as leaves, plants, flowers, trees, and more.

Design Stage

Upon completing the general research and meeting with the clients, it was now clear what type of logo the clients wanted. This research acted as a solid foundation for the rest of the project. The goal now was to create a feminine logo that included the company’s initials with a naturalistic aspect and organic shapes and designs.

Logo Design

The initial logo sketches all considered incorporating Inspired Earth Designs initials with leaves, trees, and plants in an organic and feminine style. These logo ideas were explored using the company’s initials in a range of different ways to get an idea of which direction the clients wanted to take. Upon showing the sketches to my clients, we decided on three main logos to develop further and test how they would work digitally.

Three Chosen Logos

Upon creating the logos and reviewing them digitally, my supervisor and I decided the third logo did not translate well onto the screen. While the sketches for this idea were among the strongest, we found that after creating the logo digitally, it became one of the weakest. After receiving feedback from the clients, we decided logo 1 was the strongest and had the most potential for their company. They found that this logo design effectively communicated their brand identity and highlighted their feminine qualities and modern style.

 

Further Development

My supervisor then suggested looking at other leaves or plants for the centre of the ‘E’ as this is the main focal point within the logo and should be more visually interesting. Upon researching several other plants and leaves that resembled the letter E, such as ferns, mistletoe, monstera leaves, philodendrons and more. I sketched out the new ideas and then chose the strongest ones to gauge how they worked digitally.

 

Upon showing these digital logos to the clients for review, the clients had three top choices that interested them the most. The clients felt the clean and modernness of Logo 3 had a strong and impactful message displaying their brand. However, they thought that Logos 1 and 2 held more personality and were visually interesting. At this stage, we were torn between which of these three variations captured Inspired Earth Design fully and in a feminine and organic way. While my supervisor and I felt Logo 3 was the strongest, the clients ultimately chose Logo 2 as the final version. This second logo is more playful than the others, yet the thick and thin strokes with the gentle berries add a more natural, handmade style that perfectly reflects the client’s hands-on company.

Experimenting with Typefaces

Initially researching typefaces, I decided to look at clean fonts with a strong thick and thin contrast, as this style displays an elegant, more natural style which the clients want to achieve. Upon receiving feedback from my supervisor, we found the sans-serif fonts held the most potential with the logo design. Additionally, we concluded that the typefaces would work best in bold as the logo mark is quite strong, and a delicate light typeface would create an off-balance visual. When reviewing the typeface options with the clients, we chose two primary fonts: Haboro Contrast, and Figtree. We initially chose Haboro contrast as the final font, however, after more consideration, the clients chose to use Figtree as this is also the font being used within their new website.

 

 

Format and Layout

Upon selecting two main typeface options, these were then used and organised against the logo to experiment with the format and layout options. This layout experimentation also worked as a way to distinguish which font should be the primary typeface within the logo design. In this experiment, we struggled when selecting the primary font, while my supervisor and I found Haboro Contrast to be the strongest typeface with the most potential, the clients ultimately preferred Figtree. As a result, we initially chose Haboro contrast as the final font, however, after more consideration, the clients chose to use Figtree as this is also the font being used within their new website. The clients and my supervisor both thought Layout 1 worked best alongside the logo, as the other layouts were not as strong and made the logo look off-balanced.

 

Colour Scheme

Starting this project, the clients informed me they already had a few options for the colour scheme; they carefully curated a colour palette that matched their new website design, which consisted of navy blues, light pinks and little to no greens. The clients mentioned they wished to avoid green and earthy tones as a way to stand out from their competitors. However, as greens are associated with gardening and nature, it seemed appropriate to suggest a few shades that could match their original colour scheme.

Upon designing an updated colour palette that works with the client’s primary blue and pastel pink, it became clear that these tones could not be used as a primary colour for the logo. The tones are too light and delicate to have a strong enough contrast for high legibility. However, as the clients love these accent colours, so we decided that these tones should only be used behind the primary dark blue within the logo. This ensures a high enough contrast and, therefore, strong legibility while also displaying the light and gentle attributes of Inspired Earth Design.

Final Logo

 

 

Brand Guidelines

The Inspired Earth Design brand guidelines help inform the clients on how and where to use the logos. They inform the clients of the chosen typefaces, colours and colour codes, logo formats, and inspiration. This helps to ensure the brand is presented correctly and consistently across social media and other mediums. Displaying a range of applications and mock-ups of potential business cards and website designs further helped the clients feel confident about the final logo design. Brand Guidlines IED RJ00675

Conclusion

Finally, looking over the project, it is incredibly successful; the clients are delighted with the result and have already started using the logo within various mediums. The logo perfectly reflects the brand and has exceeded the client’s expectations. While the clients had initially intended to work alongside me in designing the logo using their ideas, Emily and Jude were impressed by my work and initiative to let me take full control of the design process.

While the workload was initially challenging and stressful to handle by myself, creating a structured timeline and plan within the restated brief helped guide me and meet deadlines on time to ensure I met the end target date. As a result, this taught me how to manage my work and time efficiently, and will be a valuable skill that can be used in my future projects. Another essential skill required for this project is effective and consistent communication. Upon meeting with my supervisor countless times, learning to handle constructive criticism was an essential asset to achieving the ideal logo for the clients. Additionally, going back and analysing the small details within the logo helped the symbol work as a whole by testing the grids, proportions and legibility at different sizes, this has helped me improve as a logo designer.

Future Improvements

To improve future projects, creating a solid foundation would help the progress of the design flow smoothly. During the initial sketches of the project, they were somewhat unorganised and unstructured. This required me to go back and redraw the sketches properly to convey the design effectively and see the full potential. This small step wasted some of the time that could have been spent developing the logos further. This meant some tasks were more rushed to catch up and stay on top of the weekly deadlines. As a result, creating a structured timeline and weekly deadlines to complete tasks efficiently would have kept me on track throughout the project. Finally, this challenge is something I will consider and work on going into future projects.

Overall, this project has taught me a lot of valuable skills and lessons that can be applied to my next projects. Furthermore, logo design is an area I feel particularly confident in and would love to do again in the future. As a result, the clients wish to work together again in the future for further developments across other mediums such as business cards, letterheads and more.

Background on the project

RSG is a local charity in Reading supporting refugees. They recently changed their name from RRSG (Reading Refugee Support Group) to just RSG (Refugee Support Group) in order to receive more funding from all over Berkshire, not only Reading. They required a profile-raising social campaign to raise awareness of their new name and to receive more funding from statutory sector organisations.

Restated brief

In writing the reinstated brief, we used meetings to define our client’s needs and target audiences. However, this was our largest hurdle. Our client knew they wanted to bring recognition to the charity’s new name, but didn’t have a brief to give us beyond that. Instead of letting the lack of brief hold us back, we took the initiative to write our own brief. This gave us the advantage of working to our own strengths. We used client research to identify where the charity’s social media was lacking and this informed us of what the client actually needed. We proposed to create six Instagram posts which highlighted each of their generous services. Our client agreed that by shedding light on how successful their services are, we could attract more donations from statutory organisations, thus achieving their goals.

The agreed deliverables were:

• 6 posts dedicated to each service provided
• 1 video/animation

Research

Before the ideation process began, we underwent a period of research. This included researching RSG as a charity; their goals, audience, identity, but also researching how other successful non-profit organisations promoted themselves on social media. We looked to charities such as Amnesty International, World Relief and Refugee Action to analyse what the norms were within this sector. We also spent time analysing how RSG represented themselves within their platforms; reading through the contents of their website, Instagram and Facebook. Through this research we discovered that RSG’s social media posts lack cohesiveness due to inconsistent representation of their brand guidelines.

Reading City of Sanctuary

RSG runs a coffee bank scheme where refugees can get a free coffee in a selection of cafes across Reading. We took photos of each café, meeting the owners and talking about their experience partnering with RSG. These photographs were used to create an Instagram carousel, with each slide displaying a photo of the café along with its address. This was an exciting chance to learn more about using photography and Lightroom in combination with InDesign. Furthermore, interacting with the partners of RSG and the work they do provided us with more of a connection to their audience. A difficulty we experienced with this post was placing type upon photos in a legible manner. Often the type became problematic as it began to blend in with parts of the imagery. To resolve this issue, we placed a colour block behind the type to prioritise legibility. Upon client feedback, we also returned to the cafés to replace images of coffee with images of the outside of the cafés, so that the audience would be able to recognise the cafes when in Reading.

 

 

 

 

 

Final visuals

 

 

 

 

Settlement scheme

In creating the resettlement scheme post, it was important that we kept in tune with RSG’s brand identity. Therefore we made sure to present people of different cultures, religions, and backgrounds to demonstrate RSG’s diverse audience. Using their specified brand colour palette, our posts felt cohesive with their website and previous social media posts. We originally had planned to have a second slide, which illustrated a refugee family travelling to the U.K. However, our client advised not to use this slide, as much of the information about the resettlement scheme was currently changing and the body copy may not reflect the scheme accurately when it was time to post the slides. She gave feedback that it would be more useful to have a title and illustration which embodied the values of the scheme, and that body copy about the scheme would be more suited to being in the caption of the Instagram post. 

 

 

Final visual

 

Befriending

RSG’s ‘Befriending and English Conversation’ sessions are a service which helps refugees to improve their English skills, confidence level and reduce loneliness. We decided to demonstrate in this post how RSG builds a community and assists refugees of all ages, genders and religions. For this post we chose to create two illustrations as this would give us the freedom to experiment with colours, shapes and layout. When creating the befriending service illustration, we digitally drew a circle of people joining hands together to present how RSG unites refugees together. After feedback from our supervisor, we recognised that our design needed to be more inclusive to all cultures and religions. We adapted the illustration to include some people wearing hijabs and turbans, as well as altering the colour scheme of the illustration to follow the specified brand colour palette. In the second slide of this post, we wanted to represent an English conversation class between a volunteer and a refugee. Originally we executed this concept by illustrating British flags within speech bubbles, however feedback from our client advised us that using the British flag could carry unwanted connotations. Therefore we iterated this illustration to represent English conversation through informal text in speech bubbles.

 

 

 

Final visuals

 

Advice Support

RSG’s advice support covers many different areas, including advice on asylum and protection, and advice on signposting you to a solicitor. Their website offers a substantial amount of information on this service, and we felt that implementing all of this information into a post would result in something which is overwhelming. We felt it would be more effective to create a post which could highlight this service in a visual way. This post contrasted with the other posts, but through using the same typeface and RSG’S branding colours, the post showed a level of consistency with the others. The idea of drawing an outline of hands connected was effective due to it clearly demonstrating how advice support at RSG works. It gives a helping hand in situations where refugees feel abandoned. When experimenting with this post I tried the hand illustration in black and the background in light beige, but this reduced the overall impact the post had. A inspiration for this post was the RSG logo which includes two hands joining together underneath a simple 4 person pictogram. This similarity with the logo brought us closer to our aim in bringing engagement to what RSG’s identity is.

 

Final Visuals

 

The Strikers

The Sanctuary strikers are Berkshire’s only refugee football club. When reading about the club and their aim to promote integration by bringing together a combination of refugees and non-refugees, we were inspired to capture how the team encouraged unity. We reached out to our client inquiring whether we could photograph the team playing and both the client and the football team were elated by the idea and agreed. On this photoshoot we were able to talk to the team and ask what the club meant to them. Through these discussions, we realised how important it was to communicate the message of teamwork and show unison. This experience enabled us to practice our skills using the shutter settings to capture action shots. We also took some team photos, showing the diversity of players within the team. After photographing these images came the challenge of selecting the correct images for the post, and editing the images to ensure the text laid on top of the images was legible for readers. A few difficulties we came around were brightening up the image to focus on the strikers playing on the field rather than the grey sky. We accomplished this through using the levels, brightness and curves tool within Photoshop. This post met our clients’ aim of raising awareness of RSG in a striking and engaging way. Once finalising these posts, we realised we had remaining images which further captured the teams ‘spirit of unity’ so we created a reel of the remaining photos which could be posted on an Instagram story alongside the physical post to engage a more modern audience which RSG may not be reaching at the moment.

When using RSG’s brand typeface, Gilroy, we felt it was affecting the message of our designs. This typeface felt formal, serious and academic, whilst we wanted to produce something which was friendly, welcoming and approachable. We presented our client with two posts; one which used RSG’s brand typeface; Gilroy and one which used our choice of typeface; Crayonize. After reviewing this comparison, our client agreed that it was the right decision to make an exception to the brand guidelines, and opt for Crayonize.

 

 

 

 

Final visuals

 

 

 

The Drop in

RSG offers a drop in service three times a week in various locations across Reading. Here refugees can socialise, learn English and ask for advice. It was important to keep in mind when designing these posts that many of RSG’s audience have limited English. We used simple language and large legible typefaces to accommodate those with lower English levels. Having empathy as a designer is a lesson often taught in class, and this project was a true opportunity to practice this. Whilst the client had agreed upon using Crayonize for the headings, instead of their brand typeface Gilroy, we realised that it would be beneficial for RSG’s brand identity and legibility if we used Gilroy for the body text. This was also particularly useful for this post, The Drop-In, because it contained essential information.

 

 

Final visuals

Mockups

Link to mockup walkthrough: https://youtu.be/PQigwXNOitg?si=b95rOm4g9UY9IkdK

Reflection

This real job started off with a hurdle, however overcoming that initial hurdle lead to real assets in our design careers. We flourished both within our team and our relationship with RSG. Meeting with the Reading strikers and café owners of RSG’s coffee bank scheme was an honourable experience, generating a personal connection with our audience. This rapport between ourselves and RSG lead to a closer alignment between our designs and their goals. This job has enabled us to push the boundaries of our design skills, branching out into areas outside of our comfort zone such as videography and photography.  When approaching this Real Job, RSG’s penultimate goal was to raise awareness of their new name and receive more funding from statutory sector organisations. Tackling this goal from the perspective of highlighting their services means that statutory organisations will recognise the charitable work they do and thus feel more inclined to donate. Learning how to navigate professional relationships within the circle of design was initially daunting, but ultimately the most valuable part of this journey. We grew in confidence, developed real connections and gained skills that could not have been reached within the classroom.

Written by Tilly Dobson and Amy North

Overview

Bethan Miskell is an artist who’s planning to open an online shop where she can sell her artwork. She creates pressed flower pieces that aim to celebrate the importance of plants or weeds that may be overlooked or not seen as typically ‘pretty’ but are considered to be ‘hero’ plants that are essential for biodiversity.

Our brief was to create a unique brand and logo for Miskell’s shop that can be used on multiple platforms such as her website and social media, to help promote and represent her business.

 

Deliverables

 The original deliverables were to design a logo and a business card. However, we also suggested the addition of a ‘Thank you for your purchase’ card and a variation of logos such as a primary, secondary and social logo, therefore she would have a logo that fits multiple different formats.

 

Client meeting 

To understand our client better and to introduce ourselves we had organised a meeting to help us learn more about the story behind our client’s artwork and the style/aesthetic she is looking for regarding her brand. We found out from the meeting that she wanted a cleaner and simpler typeface that was geometric in shape, meaning no curvy or script typefaces. Our client used words such as botanical and organic to describe her business and she directed us to a brand called ‘Hiedi Clover’ as an example of the style that she likes.

Our client also kindly sent us a mood board of plants, colours and aesthetics that she would like to be reflected in her branding (see figure 1).

Research and ideation 

Our research started by finding existing flower press companies online and viewing how they branded themselves. We found most floral companies in general tended to use serifed fonts and italic typefaces (as seen in Figure 2) therefore, it was hard to find brands that used more geometric fonts as our client had described.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then sketched a few ideas of designs for the logo and narrowed it down to four different options as seen in Figure 3. Option 3 and 4 seemed too decorative for our client and she stated she wanted a simple clean look; therefore, we focused on creating digital versions of options 1 and 2.

 

After seeing the kind of logos already out there we then looked through a range of fonts and narrowed it down to three typefaces that we felt suited our client’s style the most. We then combined the typefaces with the icon of the fern we created as seen in Figure 4.

We then experimented with different layouts and illustrations (Figures 5, 6 and 7). The feedback from our client was that she preferred the Quasimoda typeface and the bolder designs, and both our client and supervisor reported that some of the illustrations were too light. We realised that for the logos to be seen from far away we had to make the strokes thicker for the illustrations and use a heavier weight for the typefaces.

 

 

 

 

Our client also reported that she preferred the style of our original fern illustration rather than the other symbol designs. This feedback helped us focus on creating bolder and thicker designs.

 

Design development

My partner in this project, Karissa, created another fern illustration which we thought worked better as it was less rigid than the first design but still bold enough to stand out when scaled down. We created two versions of the logo, one with a filled-in illustration (Figure 8) and one with an outlined illustration (Figure 9).

 

We originally didn’t have option 2 but when we showed our supervisor our designs, she suggested we add to the illustration in option 1 as there was quite a lot of white space in between the text and the illustration, which might create too much separation between ‘Bethan’ and ‘Miskell’. Therefore, to fill this white space we added a few dots around the fern as this was a design, we had seen before in a few botanical patterns we found during our research. We also provided a third option for the secondary logo to give our client another option to choose from.

Our client’s feedback was that she liked the new designs, but she preferred the filled-in illustration, and that option 3 would be the best option for her secondary logo.

 

Business card

 Once our client had approved our final logo designs, we moved on to developing her business card. My partner and I knew we wanted the business cards to have a botanical feel to match our client’s aesthetic, originally, we were planning to draw a few plants or shrubs to apply to the business card, but our supervisor pointed out that it might be better to include our clients own work so that it better represents her business. Karissa and I suggested this idea to our client, and she liked the idea. In our following meeting, our client kindly gave us one of her pieces which we scanned onto Karissa’s laptop and then we used Photoshop to cut out the pressed flowers so that there was no background, we then applied these cut-outs to the business cards.

 

After looking at a range of different business cards for inspiration we started designing our own. Our original design was very plain and only had her artwork on the card with her logo. It didn’t feel like a business card, so we decided we needed to add a background or another colour to add more depth to the card. We added a light green background (figure 10) and experimented with making some of the flowers pop out of the border (figure 11) we then added abstract shapes to the art (figure 12).

 

 

 

However, feedback from our client was that she didn’t like the abstract patterns, so we didn’t continue to add this element to the other business cards. We also realised that the flowers blended too much into the light green background so we decided to use a darker colour instead (Figures 13 and 14), which made the flowers stand out much more, we also thought this would match our client’s style more as she usually presses her flowers onto black card.

 

 

Our supervisor’s feedback was that the text was too close to the edge and that we didn’t need the dashes for the phone number as that is more commonly done in America not England. After making these adjustments we showed our client and she expressed that she liked the layout of Figure 14 the most. Our supervisor then suggested that we should adjust the layout of the back of the business card to match the front to give it a more uniform feel (Figure 15). However, after showing our client the change, she said she would prefer to continue with the first layout.

‘Thank you for your purchase’ card

When it came to designing the “Thank you for your purchase’ card we wanted to ensure that we kept a cohesive style between the two cards to make it clear that they are part of the same brand. To achieve this, we continued using our client’s artwork, and the same typeface as well as colour. We used the typeface ‘Montserrat’ for the text as it was the most clear and complimented the brand’s typeface (Figure 16).

 

Reflection

Overall, I have learnt a lot throughout the process of this real job, especially around time management and the importance of keeping to the schedule. My partner and I met up regularly to work on the project, however, I felt we should have implemented regular meetings with our client as well, as this may have improved communication and potentially sped up the process a bit more. Although we surpassed the initial deadline I’m pleased with the outcome of our final designs and feel they have achieved what the client was looking for. I appreciate the feedback we received from both our client and supervisor throughout the process. I have gained a lot more confidence when it comes to professional communication with clients which is a skill I hope to be able to use and develop further in future jobs.

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