26/09/2024-28/10/2023 (Week 7-Week 9)
Lizzie Tanaka (0362065)
Brand Corporate Identity | BDCM | Taylor's University
Task 3: Positioning & Identity
LECTURE
Lecture_5: Positioning
Brand positioning is positioning our brand in the consumer's minds, also referred to positioning strategy, brand strategy, or brand positioning statement.
Willis (2017) clarifies the difference of positioning and strategy. Positioning refers to where our brand is, the location and the destination in the map. Strategy is a long term planning process that influences the brand's positioning.
The main goal is to create a unique impression to customers so that people associated the brand or product with something specific. This way, the brand will stand out amongst its competitors.
Willis (2017) classifies 4 types of positioning:
1. Arm Wrestling
> A brand tries to take over the position of the market leader. This is time consuming and require more funds.
2. Big fish, smaller pond
> Focuses on the smaller side of an established market where a larger brand haven't succeed in providing specific needs.
3. Reframe the market
> A brand reframes the market with new terms. However, this only works if the product or service has a new innovation.
4. Change the game
> This occurs when there are no market category for our brand as it is the first and the newest kind.
Positioning vs Differentiation
Positioning: Strategic process to determine the place of a brand in a market, finding the distinctive place they want their audience to perceive their brands with.
Differentiation: This is essentially how a company makes their products and services stand out amongst their competitors.
7 Steps to Effectively Clarify The Positioning in a Marketplace
- Determine how your brand is positioning itself now
- Identify your direct competitors
- Understand how each competitor is positioning their brand
- Compare your positioning to your competitors to identify your uniqueness
- Develop a distinct and value-based positioning idea
- Craft a brand positioning statement
- Test the efficacy of your brand positioning statement
4 Tips to Craft a Brand Positioning Statement
1. Target Consumer:
What is a summary of the attitudinal and demographic description of the target group of customers your brand is attempting to appeal to and attract?
2. Market Definition:
What category is your brand competing in and in what context does your brand have relevance to customers?
3. Brand Promise:
What is the most compelling (emotional/rational) benefit to your target customers that your brand can own compared to your competition?
4. Reason to Believe:
What is the most compelling evidence that your brand delivers on its brand promise?\
A tagline or slogan may help establish our position as it is an external statement to support marketing efforts. Insights of our brand positioning statement can be turned into tagline but it's not the same.
INSTRUCTIONS
For task 3, we are tasked to apply our logo to our brand identity in four
different applications:
1. Corporate Stationery (4)
2. Collaterals (4)
3. Environmental Graphics (2)
4. Digital Presence (2)
Each mockup is formatted to PDF and submission is alongside the original
artwork in real size in PDF.
A. Sketches and References
To began this task, I start by collecting references sourced from
Pinterest.
Corporate Stationery
For my corporate stationery, to fit my overall brand image and personality, I
wanted to incorporate some colors of my brand and elements of my brand to
achieve a more fun look.
Fig 1.1 Stationeries References
I roughly sketched my ideas below. I wanted to use my looped E as a brand
element to complement the designs.
(The envelope sketch is in Figure 1.4)
With a minimum of 4 collaterals, I decided to do a planner book cover design,
calendar, stickers, and a shipping box/set mockup. Below are my visual
references.
Fig 1.3 Collaterals References
I decided to sketch a bit of my ideas. I wanted to incorporate large sized
texts on my planner covers to achieve simplicity yet it would seem bold
which would be applicable to my calendar designs as well. As for my
stickers, I thought of using my brand logo and other tag lines as well as my
loop E brand element. For the shipping set, I plan to incorporate my brand
pattern as the wrapping paper, and making a thank you card to complement
it.
Fig 1.4 Collateral Sketch 2
Fig 1.5 Collateral Sketch 1
Environmental Graphics
For my environmental graphics, I was settled on doing a storefront but was
confused on the other one. At the end, I decided to do a billboard to
promote the planner as a new arrival product.
Fig 1.6 Environmental Graphics References
I decided to roughly sketch out the idea I had in mind. Below are the
sketches. I wanted to incorporate the loop E element into the designs here
as well.
Fig 1.7 Environmental Graphics Sketch
Digital Presence
For the digital presence, we are to do a website landing page and an
Instagram profile. In both, I wanted a simple, minimalist, bold look with
colorfulness in it and the same loop E element incorporated.
Fig 1.8 Digital Presence References
Like the others, I decided to sketch out my rough ideas. Below are the
sketches.
Fig 1.9 Digital presence sketch
B. Process
B.1. CORPORATE STATIONERIES
Letterhead
For the letterhead, the idea is quite simple and straightforward. Below is
my first draft of the mockup. The artwork wasn't A4 and it followed the
mockup size. This mockup is also lopsided on the text.
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Fig 2.1 #1 Attempt on Letterhead Mockup W9
Ms. Lilian approved the design but told me to ensure that the artwork
should be A4 sized. After the feedback in W10, I decided to resize my
design to A4.
Fig 2.2 Letterhead Artwork W9
For the mockup, finding a nice one took too much time so I laid out the
three artworks of the empty letterhead, letterhead with dummy text, and
the continuation page. I gave the artwork subtle shadows and laid out an
overlay shadow above it.
Fig 2.3 Letterhead Mockup W9
Invoice
For the invoice, the design itself is pretty straightforward with the
looped E as decorative elements and the invoice content. On week 9's
feedback, Ms. Lilian approved of the design and also told me to ensure
that the artwork should be A4.
Fig 2.4 Invoice Artwork W9
Similar to the letterhead mockup, I couldn't find a good one and because
of the time, I decided to mock it up myself in Photoshop. I laid the
artwork and added a shadow to it and an overlay shadow.
Fig 2.5 Invoice Mockup W9
Business Cards
The business card design is also quite straightforward. The front page
would utilize a huge looped E element and the logo with strapline. On the
first attempt, I tried out 2 layouts as seen below. I decided to do the
green layout for the back. This size isn't the real artwork size but the
mockup size. Ms. Lilian approved of the design and told me to
resize.
Fig 2.6 Business Card Design W9
Below is the resized design.
Fig 2.7 Business Card Design - Resized W9
I mocked up the design as business cards below.
Fig 2.8 Business Card Mockup
W9
Envelope
On week 9, I showed this mockup below to Ms. Lilian. She approved of the
overall design but told me that the logo shouldn't be in that position as
it is a position for stamps. She suggested I switch the elements and the
logo's position.
Fig 2.9 Envelope mockup attempt W9
Fig 2.10 Refined and resized design W9
Fig 2.11 Mockup for envelope W9
B.2. COLLATERALS
Planner Cover Design
For the planner cover, I just wanted a simple, straightforward design.
There were a lot of tries but unfortunately I had only saved the ones I
was quite satisfied with. The first one (left) and the third one (right)
were my two main preference. The center mock up was an experiment of using
the brand element. I showed Ms. Lilian all three of these and she told me
that the collaterals doesn't have to be so extremely consistent with the
stationeries, meaning it doesn't have to include the loop E as the
element. I personally preferred the first (left) one and so did Ms.
Lilian. I ended up going with the first (left) one as the final
design.
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Fig 2.12 Mocked up book W9
The design above is actually not done in real artwork size as it was done
in the .psb layer of the mockup. However, I did want the book to be the
size of A5. The artwork below is a the A5 version. I did end up creating
another color just for the variation.
Fig 2.13 Planner cover design W9
There were some other refinements made after the feedback such as fixing
the size of the logo since it was below the minimum logo size.
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Fig 2.14 Mockup of planner W9
Calendar
For my calendar, I wanted the cover design to be similar to the planner
design. There were a few attempts on the calendar cover design. I also
struggled in determining the supposed real size of the calendar. I already
liked the first attempt of the calendar for January so I mainly struggled
with the cover to appear attractive.
Fig 2.15 Calendar cover process W9
Fig 2.16 Calendar mockup process W9
Eventually, I settled with design no. 3 before putting it inside the
mockup.
Stickers
This is by far the idea that took the most time. I initially had this idea
proposed but during W10 when I was completing it, I had scratched the idea
and was looking for another collateral to do since my brand didn't have
any mascot or brand elements that would be interesting enough for
stickers. Ms. Lilian saw my progress and suggested that it would work with
my current idea. At the time, I only had the main logo sticker, the 19,
the pattern in the circle, the 'roll with it' and the looped E.
She suggested I switch the colors and explore it. I was advised to try to
mock it up as if it was inside a plastic packaging like a sticker set and
then mock it up when it is applied on an object. I ended up refining until
this point:
Fig 2.17 Sticker progress W9
Unfortunately, since there are no sticker mockups that are catered
specifically to my shape of sticker, I had to add the effects myself. I
grouped the object and added an offset path in Illustrator before
importing it to Photoshop. For the sticker effect, I decided to add a
paper texture and added drop shadow to the stickers. I then stacked the
stickers into the plastic.
Fig 2.18 Sticker process #1 W9
I thought the plastic didn't seem as if the product would be good quality
so I tried finding a better plastic packaging.
Fig 2.19 Sticker process #2 W9
I was about to mock up the stickers applied to the book but I felt like it
lacked variation. I added the name sticker so it would be more applicable
for users. Below is the original design I worked with in Illustrator. I
switched up the colors, sizes, and rotate the design in Photoshop for
variety.
Fig 2.20 Sticker design in Illustrator W9
The mockup still had it flaws such as the color being too faded and there
were no shadows. I refined it by manually adding shadows using the brush
and lowering the opacity and masking it to appear more subtle. I used
curves to add contrast and make the sticker colors appear brighter.
Fig 2.21 Refining sticker mockup W9
After the stickers were settled, I thought about the stickers being used
on a notebook. I did the design in Photoshop before copying the design to
fit the real size (A5) in Illustrator.
Fig 2.22 Stickers application mockup 1 W9
Fig 2.23 Stickers application mockup 2 W9
Fig 2.24 Artwork process W9
Shipping Box
Initially, I was undecided whether to do a shopping bag mockup or a
shipping bag mockup. However, after doing one shopping bag mockup, I
couldn't find a mockup I liked and decided to do a shipping box one. Ms.
Lilian approved of this mockup but I find myself not being satisfied with
it.
Fig 2.25 Shopping bag mockup attempt W9
I began by making the artwork in the real size of the box I wanted which
was a just a little bigger than A5 since the biggest product would be the
planners in A5. The wrapping paper's width is just a bit shorter than the
box width in square to follow the mockup size. The thank you card would be
in A6. I also made an artwork for the circle sticker, which would be
around 7.5cm in real size.
Fig 2.26 Artwork for shipping box W9
Fig 2.27 Artwork for thank you card W9
Fig 2.29 Sticker artwork in real size W9
Fig 2.30 Shipping box mockup W9
B.3. ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHICS
Storefront
For the storefront, I was determined to make it fun. Pure fun with many of
the looped E elements surrounding it. I created the artwork first in
Illustrator for the main window which will consist of my the logo and the
strapline.
Fig 2.31 Storefront artwork W9
In the left window pane, I wanted the looped E to sort of surround the
mirror and leave a space in the middle with a text saying 'snap a
picture!.' I felt like many people tend to take mirror selfies in window
shop mirrors for the silhouettes and wanted the window pane to have that.
But I scratched that idea because I thought that it might not work
anyways. I changed the text to urge people to 'take a peek' of the shop
instead.
Fig 2.32 Storefront mockup process W9
As for the door, it featured the opening hours of the shop.
Billboard
Truthfully, I was undecided on whether or not I should do a billboard. I
wanted to do a signage but I felt like there isn't much I can design for a
small signage except putting on my logo and slap some looped E elements. I
did attempt to do it. I also attempted to do a sidewalk poster but the
mockup I chose felt so dark compared to the fun feeling I wanted my brand
to exude. And I couldn't find a mockup I liked so I scratched the
idea.
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Fig 2.33 Signages attempt W9
I also attempted a poster but wasn't quite satisfied with the
result.
Fig 2.34 Poster attempt artwork W9
Fig 2.35 Poster mockup attempt W9
I decided to do a billboard which would be a promotion for the newest
product, the planner. I recycled the poster design to a different size
for the billboard.
Fig 2.36 Billboard artwork W9
Fig 2.37 Billboard mockup process W9
B.4. DIGITAL PRESENCE
Website Landing Page
The website landing page is quite straightforward in design. I wanted to
incorporate the looped E elements again as decoration and made the landing
page a persuasion for people to pre-order the planner. I showed this to
Ms. Lilian and she approved of the design.
I included the loop E elements to further enhance the consistency of my
brand.
Fig 2.38 Website landing artwork
Instagram Profile
For the Instagram profile, I did a quick one during class before feedback
session to see how it would roughly look like. I mocked it up on a phone
as well. The feed's theme is the campaign for the upcoming planner
pre-order. I wanted the feed to be simple, minimalist, and colorful. Ms.
Lilian saw this progress and approved of it.
Fig 2.39 Instagram artwork attempt #1 W9
Fig 2.40 Instagram Mockup attempt #1 W9
However, I wasn't quite satisfied myself especially in the phone mockup
the navigation bar of the Instagram was cut off. I also felt like it was
done quite rushed and I wanted to refine it. Ms. Lilian also pointed out
that the profile picture was a bit too small and I could enlarge the logo.
I ended up remaking a bit of it and changing mockups. This mockup had 12
visible photos but I only did 9 with designs and the last three are just
plain colors.
Fig 2.41 Instagram Grid Artworks W9
Fig 2.42 Instagram grid mockup W9
Fig 2.43 Phone mockup W9
C. Final Submission
1. Stationery
Fig 3.1 Letterhead Artwork
Fig 3.2 Invoice Artwork
Fig 3.3 Business Card Artwork
Fig 3.4 Envelope Artwork
Fig 3.5 Stationeries Mockup
2. Collateral
Fig 3.6 Planner Cover Artwork
Fig 3.7 Calendar Artwork
Fig 3.8 Shipping Box Artwork
Fig 3.9 Sticker Artwork
Fig 3.10 Collaterals Mockup
3. Environmental Graphics
Fig 3.11 Billboard and Storefront Artwork
Fig 3.12 Billboard and Storefront Mockup
4. Digital Presence
Fig 3.13 Instagram Posts Artwork
Fig 3.14 Website Artwork
Fig 3.15 Digital Presence Mockup
Fig 3.16 Brand Positioning PPT
FEEDBACKS
Week 7:
- References are good to go
- Target audience: use the segmentation
- Brand value: should be something the brand stands for
Week 9:
- Logo in the profile picture can be bigger
- Envelope: switch logo to the left side because the right side is usually for stamps
- Remember to submit stationeries in real size
- Stickers; Can try to play with the different colors, mock it up to how it can be applied, try to explore more of the
looped E
REFLECTIONS:
Experience:
I find this task quite fun, honestly. Probably the one phase
of brand identity that I was looking forward since creating
the logo. It felt satisfying looking at my logo and brand
coming together. Moreover, we had more creative freedom while
designing compared to task 2. I think the hardest part of this
was sourcing mockups that aligned with what I had in mind for
the specific item. I spent so much time sourcing mockups that
looked good and followed my idea, yet it was quite fun too. I
also had some difficult times when modifying the mockups as
the effects sometimes could alter the color and I had to
manually try to find the nearest possible color to the
original one. Thankfully, this isn't my first time working
with mockups so it was still bearable and I wasn't so blind
about it.
Observations:
I observed that while I had creative freedom, I sometimes tend
to forget about the 'real size' artworks which sometimes
required more detail and attention especially in the typography
such as text sizes, the paragraph length and so on.
Findings:
I find that making mockups for a complete brand identity is not
simply slapping my logo to a product. It requires more
creativity and more exploration than that. I find myself
restricting my design choices with the thoughts of staying
'consistent.' But I felt like the brand got quite boring when I
tried to exactly make each design the same. It lacked the
creativity and looked like a template.
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