OUGD602 - PPP3 - Personal and Professional Practice - Final Design boards for Personal Branding

OUGD602 - PPP3 - Personal Branding

Sarah Heal Personal Branding 2015

Components:

• Business Cards
• Invoice
• Email Signature
• Twitter Page
• Website for Desktop and Mobile

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE

VIEW MY BEHANCE HERE

CONNECT WITH MY LINKEDIN HERE

FOLLOW MY TWITTER PAGE HERE

The main inspiration, aside from last year’s personal branding, was the ongoing theme of Mid Century Americana. But a lesson learnt since last year was to TONE IT DOWN! The theme has been vastly simplified, mostly reliant on ‘blank’ space, which I have learned to love. 

Previously in favour of a highly illustrative layout, a more simplistic style was adopted to expand shelf life and also to eliminate fear of appearance of seeming juvenile. However, this ‘retro’ style is still hinted through the colour scheme and the slanted oblong framing the logo as it echoes those also seen in the portfolio itself. 

The lettering within the logo is my own handwriting, so remains true to myself. A slab serif was chosen for a contemporary twist. Grey was chosen for type over black so it wasn’t so harsh looking. This new identity lets the portfolio work speak for itself.

New Business Card Design

Again, in ‘letting the work speak for itself’ I have disciplined my design style for a more widely-appealing, simpler look. As you can see, there are many ways to contact, many of which are online. The decision was made to opt for more digital and online presence, since I intend for lots of my clients to be overseas such as the US or the Netherlands, seeing as they are best points of contact when concerning Themed Entertainment design, the industry I am still pursuing.

Email Signature

Again, a digital presence was favoured over a printed one, as I quickly realised I have never actually sent a written/ printed letter in my life! An email signature that pointed to my online presence and was consistent with the visual brand, was a lot more suitable. 

Twitter Page Branding

The observation was made that a huge portion of my connections and contacts were made through social media, most notably Twitter - it spreads information like wildfire! 

I deemed it important that my Twitter both advertised my services and echoed the rest of the visual identity.

www.sarahhealdesign.com - 'Hello (home)' Page

For the first time in my life, I have my own website that showcases my portfolio. The colour scheme is consistent to the rest of the brand down to the number code! But again, a more minimalistic approach was adopted. There is even a favicon! I am extremely rusty with coding, and so opted for a site builder which concerned none whatsoever, leaving me to focus on the design itself and not limiting myself to the technicalities behind it, when out of university wouldn’t necessarily be part of my job. I am already seeing positive results from having my own website, including more traffic on my Behance portfolio (which is linked through the site) and two new clients - the site had not even been up for a week yet! 

'Work' Page

I took inspiration from my favourite designers websites to create a very basic layout which again, let’s the work speak for itself. I found rolodex and long pages without shortcuts hard to navigate around, and so created a grid system that lets you enter each project through a small thumbnail, and then back again. I chose the projects I wanted to showcase the most, such as ones that maybe express different techniques, some concern type more than image, and vice versa. But all of them are definitely more on the illustrative side, which is how I want to portray myself to new clients, this is the work I am more interested in.

'Work Closeup' Page

This is a typical page you can see if you were to click on one of the thumbnails on the ‘work’ page. Again, using a simple layout inspired by a few of my favourite artists and designers portfolios, The text down one side and images on the other leave the viewer to view as they please (I found that when mindlessly browsing other designers work, I wouldn’t read the text if I wasn’t intrigued by the visuals themselves).

'Résumé & CV' Page

For my CV page, (which I also named Resume to suit the Stateside clients I hope to visit my site) I dropped in a design that I created as a printable CV for the recent jobs I have applied to. This was to hope that if needs be, clients would be able to download and print my CV if they so wish.

'Let's Talk' Page

Rather than have a standard ‘Contact’ Page, I decided to show a more chatty tone by naming it ‘Let’s Talk’ and including a little bit of (silly) information about myself. I think it’s important to convey a little personality in this industry, rather than hide behind a screen.

Mobile Website

Luckily, the website builder I chose, gave the opportunity to create the website visuals for mobile, too. The only thing that I’m not happy with about the mobile version is the homepage - the stretched image doesn’t quite fit, which I think I am stuck with unless I hide it altogether.