When I first was introduced to this module, I had no idea how much was involved in branding. Before, I thought it was just logos and advertising. Now, from completing the module I have learned that branding creates a personality for the business, not just their identity.
During this module, I have learned how important it is to keep consistency throughout the brand by using varied sizes of text making sure they’re responsive across all screens. Also, the colours you’ve selected are accessible for those with visual impairments.
I was intrigued to discover how every brand’s font is unique to their business, adapting to suit their persona and entice their target audience. It has allowed me to view brand’s word marks and logomarks thinking how they created theirs. It is interesting to know how these can be recognised easily without seeing the brand name initially.
At the start of the project, I was overwhelmed when I needed to come up with the values and name on the first week. Although, looking back I can see the importance of building your brand once you’ve established this. It took me a while until I came up with my bank name, then I was able to know where I was going with my brand, and enjoyed the process a lot more. I am proud of what I’ve accomplished over the last twelve weeks.
Also, the process of the banking app was very challenging. I wasn’t familiar with using an existing app, and making it original. To overcome this, I added in an extra page showing all the features my bank offers and created my own icons for each of these. Also, I adapted the navigation icons to suit my brand to make it more unique.
Lastly, I found designing the landing page harder than expected. I struggled with the layout especially and spacing between elements. From my lecturer explaining to me by reducing the distance between frames and sections, and using a bigger size difference between font sizes gives more white space around everything. This is something that will take practice and experience to be able to achieve this going forward.
Since this was my first branding project, I think I’ve done well at achieving what was given to me. Although, there’s a few things I would do next time to save me a lot of time. In Figma, I would make sure to use components from the start and put everything inside a frame. To ensure, I am able to reposition elements without having to select each individually.
Another thing I need to improve on, is to spread my time equally between project work and research. During this semester, I felt it was hard to manage my time effectively on these because there was a lot to do on each. For next year, I am going to set small tasks each day on each aspect in order to not feel overwhelmed and be able to concentrate on both equally.
As well, I’d like to do more sketching before working on software. In particular, I find it hard to come up with multiples ideas at the minute, then when I start designing on my laptop, I can’t visualise what I want it to look like. In order to help this, I think by drawing detailed sketches and different layouts to give myself a selection, to see what works and what doesn’t when I develop it further.