fmp week 4

{21/04/14 - 25/04/14}

Day 1: For my fourth week of my final major project, I changed my concept of only branding a natural skin care line into having the idea of using a 'base cream' which customers can tailor and alter their creams, by putting in natural elements that will improve and enhance everyone's different needs. I like this concept because it is an unique selling point to have customers personalising their creams and as a result, will have a significant meaning to purchase knowing it isn't original and no one else has it. I wanted to have a greater connection with people and their cosmetics because I don't think people are aware of chemicals we applied onto our skin everyday. So from the sudden change, I used all my brand values and adjectives to help me look at my name and logo for my skincare.

During my experimentation, I was having trouble of approaching words and which were suited for my brand, Soofiya helped me out and with the given selection of words I wrote in my sketchbook, she helped me expand more with the idea of using basic shapes and look at the thesaurus to maybe see another way it sounds better or even in another language. In the end I liked the idea of 'Lien' which translate to 'Connection' and I thought I wanted to bring in the aspect of connecting people and cosmestics closer with this brand, the word itself is easy and short to read and thought it is perfect to label my brand as it would easily stick in to people's minds.

I experimented with the type and how to justify each idea and also the idea of using a heart into the name, making it seem loving and warm. I personally like the idea of the name in a ribbon-like type to layer on top of the heart, making it look very elegant and a gift to each customer, however I thought it was very complicated as a logo and may have some difficulties if I were to print this design on labels etc, and also I didn't want to stop experimenting at this point.

I started on a new approach with the concept of lemons. Lemon is very well-known ingredients in cosmestics and having the association of something fresh, natural and citrus. Although it wasn't a main ingredient in my brand, I thought lemons would be a great start to add imagery in the logo. And so I sketched out different ways lemons can appear, for example, as a whole, sliced in half, the skin, a slice of lemon etc. I done trials of trying to form the type into the shapes or around it but I didn't think it was a strong idea, Andrew Osman commented that it can easily resemble a food store. I left the lemon idea and focus more onto basic shapes.

Day 2: I continued my journey to finding the perfect  logo for my brand, at this point I was experimenting with circles and different type such as joint handwriting to seem elegant and classy to thin uppercase type to seem neutral to both men and women. In the end I liked the effortless type because it shows connection through type and thought it was a good idea to work on, however I have to be careful not to form the 'L' as an 'E' accidentally. I think I was working very slow with is process because I had a hard time to generate ideas that for similar to ideas I have now, I didn't want completely abandoned an idea of one try and I tried my best to work with all the aspects before moving onto another.

Here I experimented with tight and loose type and decided to go with the loose nad effortless type because it visually shows the loose connection of people and cosmestics and ties in the meaning in this type. With that said, I experimented with basic shapes again to perhaps represent 'people' and 'cosmestics' into my brand and came up with using a circle with a trangle underneath it to resemble a person and a raindrop to resemble pure and natural cosmestics. I placed each icon on both ends of the name to again visually show how the brand Lien connects both icons together. I trialed and error with the placement of these icons so it doesn't look out of balance.

Day 3: Talking to Lydia helped me point out that the type reminds her of arabic calligraphy because of the large gap of the 'L' and the 'I' was very little to see, so I made some adjustments so it is readable and easy to understand. I continued experimenting with my icons and my peers and Andrew Osman really like the idea of placing the icons side by side and 'Lien' underneath it is simplistic but has a lot of meaning behind it. It is very iconic and truely shows a cosmestics feel to it. Because of Lydia's comment, I practiced writing out 'Lien' to perfect it for my final logo design.

Right now it is not finish but this is the basic logo design.