Branding Analysis

 Initial Sketches

For the initial sketches of my logo for my branding, I knew that I wanted something to do with trees and jungles, due to the chosen name of my business 'Story Jungle'. With a name like this, it felt reasonable to try and link the 'Jungle' aspect of the name into the branding of the company. Additionally, by using natural imagery like leaves and palm trees, I could help to push the message that my business is additionally eco-friendly (which I can't see it not being, due to being just a writing company).

All of my sketches seen on the right involve leaves in one way or another, with the majority of the designs utilising a round border with leaf patterns orbiting it. The few sketches that don't use this leafy border include leaves in one way or another in the logo, such as the bottom left logo of the first image which shows trees (which will be seen as silhouettes) within the book. In addition to this, I've avoided using sans serif fonts too heavily for my branding, as I feel this would portray my business as too serious which is not the way I want to present my business. I wish to present my business as comfortable and welcoming, leading to a preference for serif fonts or generally more unique fonts that give off a more comfortable, fun vibe.

Another thing I wanted to consider for my branding is the use of the colour green. I believe the colour green has connotations of kindness and growth, due to the prevalence of the colour throughout nature. Therefore, I wanted to try and use green for a lot of my logo (although I was also considering a shade of yellow due to the massive links to happiness and positivity the colour has).

Moodboard

After producing the sketches for my ideas for a logo, I had to make a moodboard with further ideas and inspirations I had for what my logo could potentially look like. I took my previous sketches into consideration as I made this moodboard, hence the heavy usage of palm trees, books and leafy borders seen on the left side of the moodboard. I included a few shades of green that I thought would look nice for my logo. I chose these shades of green specifically primarily because I felt they weren't so bright that they hurt your eyes, but they weren't too dark, gloomy or unsaturated either. They hit a nice balance of comfortably bright and colourful but not as far as neon green. Similarly, I included some shades of yellow I was considering in the bottom right as well just incase I decided to go for a yellow logo. It's not guaranteed I'll produce any yellow logos due to the green having multiple links (peace, happiness, nature, jungles, etc.), but I wanted to make sure I had a few colours to take reference from when I begin making prototypes.

I also went through some font ideas that I liked the look of for my business. Two of the fonts are serif fonts, with the other two being sans serif. However, the sans serif fonts avoid looking too corporate or rigid by having a sort of hand-written appearance, giving them a more creative appearance compared to something like Arial. Similarly, one of the serif fonts has some massive swirls for the serifs of the letters, giving the font a whimsical look in general. While I liked the fun atmosphere this gave at first glance, I'm now beginning to think it might be a little too far and could make my business seem as if it's for children (which was not my intention). With this in mind, I'm unlikely to use the top right font choice, with my most preferred font being the bottom left one. The bottom left font has a nice hand-written style to it and doesn't appear too corporate or too childish, whilst being slightly more thin and calm than the top left font. This is entirely a matter of personal preference, although I will definitely try out the top left font in some of my prototype logos to see how it fits.

Logo Development

After having completed the moodboard above, I began the process of designing the logo for my business. It was quite difficult to decide on a final look for the business that gave off the sort of vibes I wanted, and I went through a number of different prototype logos seen below.

The first two logos were what created the basis for my final logo, although I thought that the colour didn't quite work for what I was trying to portray with my business and clashed with the imagery of a jungle. Additionally, while my peers disagreed with this, I felt that the font I used for the first logo was a little too corporate and modern, going against my intentions for how I wanted to present my business. I also felt that having the name of the business next to the logo looked a little clunkier than having the name beneath the logo as in the second and fourth concepts. The second concept is closer to what I wanted, but I feel that the font I chose was far too thin and corporate, again not giving off the brand image that I want. The third logo looked nice, in my opinion, although it didn't give off the feeling of a business that focused on writing and story commissions, and rather seemed like the sort of logo you'd see on a bottle of body wash or for some kind of spa company (in my opinion). Finally, while I quite liked the last logo's colour and natural imagery, it has almost nothing to do with writing and short stories and instead looks like the logo for a nature charity. None of these logos satisfied me with the personality they gave off, although I felt that I could combine aspects from each of them to create a logo I was happier with.

I eventually decided on combining the structure and iconography from the second logo (albeit with an oval rather than a circle as I felt the shape fit the book inside better) with the colour and font of the final logo to create this logo seen on the right. The colour fits well with the jungle theming that I've given the business, and the usage of the book in the logo clearly informs the viewer that the company is related to stories and writing. In addition, the font that I had chosen to use is quite 'fun' and hand-written in appearance, further lending to the friendly vibe I wanted to give off.

I eventually felt that this logo was a little too simple and bland, so I altered the colouring of the logo to be more of a gradient, added some beveling to give more depth to the logo and curved the text around the oval to compact the logo closer together. While I felt that this did improve the logo somewhat, I was beginning to worry that I was doing too much and overcomplicating the design. Part of the reason I chose the original logo design was due to its simplicity and how easily digestible it was for anybody's eyes.

The final changes that I made to the logo were an attempt to simplify the design of the logo a little more. In order to do this, I removed the beveling from both the text and the logo itself. I felt that this gave the logo a good balance between a more interesting appearance with the gradient colouring whilst not becoming over-saturated with unnecessary details. In addition, my teacher suggested that my previous font appeared too much like a microsoft font and seemed generic, which was something I agreed with. With this feedback, I altered the font to DK Yellow Lemon Sun, found on Dafont. I felt that this font maintained the rounded, friendly appearance that I was intending for the business whilst additionally appearing far more professional rather than like a font I pulled straight from Photoshop.