design brief

Unit 45 apparel branding design.

In this project we had to create our own brand identity for a new apparel brand and come up with our own name for it. It had to represent a city such Mexico City, Denver etc. I chose Perth and named my clothing line Pelican.

The first thing we had to do was collect 2 sets 6 mood board which consisted of companies, the first set I selected 6 I liked that didn’t necessarily relate to clothing brands, but just had logos I like and I had to annotate why I liked them and why the logo related to the product. The second set of mood boards had clothing companies logos that mainly consisted of an urban/skate theme to them because that was the sort of style I was aiming for, I commented why they looked good and what sort of style they were.

The next mood board showed 2 packaging, 2 labels and 2 bags. I chose ones that caught my eyes the most and commented why I liked them, what sort of style they were and what sort of message they were trying to convey. Then I did a mood board about accessories and looked for ones that were linked to clothing brands such as LRG etc. I found a mouse mat, key rings, rug and USB pens; I annotated about what was on the design and why it related to the brand, I also mentioned how it would promote the company even further by making customers hold even more products in their household.

I did a colour mood board which showed different tones to help me decide what sort of colour I would use in my clothing designs, For my main logo I ended up going for a simple outline design for a more basic look. Then I did a font mood board and chose my favourite one to represent my logo, because I am not that good at drawing my own type this became helpful for main logo.

After that I looked at some locations in Perth so I could get a better Idea of place I am designing clothing for which would make me more informed of what the climate and scenery is like.

Once I did that I had to find images stationary designs like business cards, post cards etc. I talked about what sort of design they used and why it was effective, I looked at the fonts, style and colours and how it related to the product which would help me design my own stationary.

I thought I should look at what clothing designs looked like on the clothing, so I did a mood board about which really helped me become more informed about the readability, legibility and professionalism of the design, I wear a lot of these designs so I knew which ones were the best ones to pick to influence my clothing line and style.

Since my clothing line was called ‘Pelican’ I did a mood board about Pelicans and got different pictures of them so I knew what they looked like in flight and standing still etc. Looking at all of these pictures helped me draw pelicans a lot better and in different positions, which meant that I could draw different ones on each design.

I sketched pelicans in water, standing on rock then drawing it feathers etc. I looked at my selection to help my preference of what they looked like and made my pelican look more detailed and professional.

Once I got the main concept of what they looked like I tried putting some ideas together by putting a pelican in a summery type badge with leaves and banners to give it more depth, I only did an outline because I wanted to try out some other design first and I didn’t think this design would look that great on a shirt after looking at it a few times.

Whilst I was doing designs I thought I should do a type design with different type, I used fonts I liked and tried to make it look more readable however once I got feedback I chose not use this design on a clothing design and went back to the drawing board to come up with some more designs.

I carried on with the pelican reef design for a bit longer chose a different font to put on it and put my design in Photoshop to play around with the levels to make it a bit clearer and the blacks a bit darker so it looks more legible and professional.

I came up with another variant which I scanned in and made it just an outline in Adobe Illustrator so it relates to the main logo, which makes it more consistent and professional however after drawing other design I chose not use this design for my clothing line.

After that I refines my final logo and played around with the levels to make it bolder and more basic and professional, I used One of the fonts that I like from my research and I felt that it looked good with the logo altogether.

When I did my stationary designs I decided to follow my simplistic theme and made all of the outlines and basic. My business card just had a bold pelican outline on the front which would catch the customer’s eye and on the back I used a pelican water mark at an angle by changing the opacity to around 20% and sent it to the back then chose a different font that I thought was better than my previous font and used another font that was a similar sort of style. On my Letter head design I put my pelican water mark in the corner of the design and cantered all of my text and logo so that it followed a theme and was legible. On my compliment slip I did the same thing but added ‘with compliments’ in the same font as my logo and made sure that all of my stationary followed the same them which made it look consistent.

I used my logo for the tags I created in Adobe illustrator, I used the same theme by using simple bold colours so that it would catch the audiences by not take it away from the clothing itself, once we did that we used string and mounted it on black card.

Next I went back to the drawing board and decided to use a triangle as a boarder for my design and came up with a few different variations of what could be in and once I chose the best one I started to refine it before I out it on the computer. I used Biro pen to refine the design and by using mixed media, it gave a different look to it and made it look crisper.

Then I came up with the ‘P for pelican’ design and used pens to give it a different look by doing this makes it more colourful and bolder. I added a darker green feather tone in the P to give it more depth.

Once I refined the design by making the P look more natural and elegant. I decided to use pens because I wanted to use different styles on my all my designs, which makes it more creative and professional. Once I refined it I scanned it in and played around with levels and blending modes so that it looks more neutral and better on the crew neck doing this would attract customers to buy it.

When I scanned the ‘pelican triangle’ design I put it into Adobe illustrator and pen tooled then made them more basic so that it would suit my basic theme. I added some darker toned polka dots in the background to give it more depth and look eye catching for the customer.

Then I put my design on a T-shirt and tried it out in 2 different ways, one in the centre and the other in the left pocket. I did this to see which one I preferred and I decided I preferred the left pocket one because it gives the design more room to breathe and links to the skater fashion right now.

When I was drawing I came up with the ‘explosive pelican’ design and I did a rough drawing of the pelican in pencil first so I could get the rough outline of the pelican which would make it easier for me to refine it. Then I used biro to make it bolder and give a cross-hatch shading effect which gives it another dimension, once I did that I used pencil colours to make the design stand out more and used all three aspects to draw bubbles around to make it seem like its exploding with the colours and biro together. After I had refined I scanned it and played around with levels and blending modes to make it look more forgiving on the crew neck, doing this would attract customers to the design.

I started working on my phone case design and I decided to go for a more basic look by using bold colours and silhouettes to emphasis the idea. I gave it a more summery look so it would apply to Perth’s weather and relate to my clothing line by relatively basic and simple. Once I did that I put it on a white phone case and played around with levels and blending modes so it looked professional.

When I was sketching out some ideas for my wall art I came up with some really rough ideas of what it could look like and once I got home I started to refine it. I used watercolours to give my design a different dimension and it made my shading look more on point and crisp, I used some chalk to emphasis the sun’s light and used black pencil to outline because it looks a lot more forgiving then straight fine liner. Then I scanned it in and played around with the levels and blending modes to make it look like it’s been painted on the wall.

Then we had to print out our work, so we set out 2 A3 documents and set out our work according to how many pieces of clothing we had, because I had 4 I put them on the A2 piece of paper and put the wall art design and phone case design on the A3 so it has room to breathe and looks more professional. We placed out our designs on black card and made sure our bottom gap was bigger because people would be looking at it from below, so it would look centred.

In this project I have learnt a lot about how to design clothing make it legible. I have learnt that when I draw designs I get better outcome then I would using the computer so I will do a lot more drawing heavy designs and only a bit computer in the future. I will use what I have learnt about legibility and logos relating to the product in future projects to achieve and better outcome.