By: Zion Nolan
Odin is an architecture company focused on developing the blueprints, building plans, and budgets for all your construction needs. Odin does not officially exist, but this serves as the complete Brand Guidelines for Odin Architecture and Planning. This project was done as part of UTDallas ATEC Senior Capstone.
The first thing that I did was decide that I would be creating the entire branding specifications of a hypothetical company. This includes brand attributes, tagline, logo, colors (combinations), typeface specifics, sizing, clearance, mockups, and website samples. All of these things will be shown in a digital slide deck/booklet available for viewing.
This would be the part of the project where I would ask specific questions to Odin. What does your company do? What are your values? Do you have any specific aspects of the brand that you want displayed? What is the timeline that this project needs to be completed in?
This long list of specifications needed to create Odin's brand seems long, and it could take a ton of work. This is where ideation comes in. My ideation process begins with research. Finding similar branding specifications that look great can help me create the best work that I can. I found a couple of fantastic branding slide decks that molded the outline for what I wanted to create.
After Research comes planning and organization. I wrote down every step of the project and laid out every slide to see it all. None of the slides had any content at this point but having the visual scales down the kind of design that needs to be done.
Designing and refining began next. This section is the real meat of the project. My process for creating assets for Odin is linear (mostly). I started from the first slide and worked my way forward with assets stacking up on each other to create the product. I say 'mostly' because this is where the Refine comes into play. While designing, there is almost always something previous that could improve based on what is currently being created. In these branding specifications, I already had a logo designed and the company's tagline created. When I reached the section where designing color and color combinations was next, I found that the colors that I was using where suboptimal for the kind of company that Odin really was. I decided, after reaching colors, to completely change the logo, company traits, and colors already decided upon. This was all done in the design process, but things had to be refined to make them better.
The completing of "Design and Refine" was marked by the completion of the final typography section before creating mockups. In this part of my process, I run through every section of what has been created and find ways to improve it. It is rare that I find nothing to change or revise.
This would be the part of the process where I would show what I have made to Odin for them to give final changes or approve of the branding specifications. After the client finally approves after the process of "Review and Revise," it is on to "Finalize"
This section was the smoothest for this project. It mainly involved creating nice mockups to fully complete the branding specifications slide deck. I use this section to place everything where it needs to be. I made sure that each slide was polished, each asset was rendered at the highest quality, and there are 0 mistakes.
Finally, I placed the completed slide deck into a digital booklet reader to prepare it to be displayed to the client.
