As I start to reconsider my brand identity for my digital portfolio, spreading across a website and Instagram, I feel it is important to analyse others. To become attractive to employers I will analyse each of my ideal company’s websites and social media. After doing so I will construct a list of what works well and how I can use this information to build my own website and Instagram. I think this will help each brand/ employer see how I relate to their business and how I can benefit/ fit in with their team.

I am taking consideration to not directly copy content, colour and type themes but instead be selective, using one or two successful strategies to build my profiles. I am aware that I cannot be fully attractive to multiple different brands so as I apply to each individual job I will tailor my content to suit. For the purpose of this project I will include appealing features from all brands on my database to show how I can appeal to many. I am hoping this technique will be successful as I have gathered tried and tested strategies from multiple brands to use in conjunction with each other.

I received some feedback for my business card logo and cv design from tutors which made me reconsider the relevance of my design. I realised that the coloured shapes were random and did not relate to my work. The tutors told me it might be a better outcome if I was to relate the logo to my work and really think about why I am using it.

Instantly this sparked visual inspiration for me as I started to consider using some patterns from my bleach work and shapes made from my scan experiments. I have always embraced imperfect imagery and have never invested in totally neat put together outcomes. Therefore using these interesting shapes instead of my previous random ones will add character to my portfolio.

To move forward with this idea I will test if my previous experiments will be fitting for this type of design or whether I need to do more.

Yesterday I started to design my CV to suit my brand identity and portfolio. Luckily I had the content up to date from when I was applying for internships in my placement year. The CV was a word document with a very basic template and no consideration into fonts or design.

I transferred the content into InDesign where I had more freedom to be creative and play with different layout styles. I knew that I wanted the document to be landscape because I think this orientation is more screen friendly and stands out against typical portrait CV’s. It means the viewer does not have to scroll to read the full page and all the information is clearly in front of them.

It was important for the content to be very clear and easy to read so that there are no distractions. With this in mind I started with a white background and split the page into three columns to create easily readable sections. My name and contact details were inserted into the first column with plenty of space surrounding them to make them stand out. I decided to add my profile and skills on the first page as an introduction to me and listed my employment, education and references on the second page as these relate to each other. My name and contact details were added to the second page too so that the reader does not have to navigate to the first page and therefore is more convenient.

Overall, I am happy with the design and layout, I have managed to construct a clear layout which has simple designs to not take away from the content. The landscape orientation complements the content and is a simple considered design technique to stand out without trying too hard.

I created this colour pallet for my brand identity and to use throughout my portfolio. I used a mixture of cool blue tones and warm orange tones as they stand out against each other.  When looking at other creative portfolios online I noticed a strong theme of pink tones across many. Therefore, I wanted to stray away from this to ensure I stand out.

I am not usually someone who experiments with lots of colour and I did consider using a very basic pallet of black grey and white but I felt it didn’t feel warm or inviting. This led me to consider the warmer orange tones in my pallet. I was careful to not add too many tones into this scheme although I felt like I needed a mix of darker and lighter so I could use them throughout my whole portfolio to complement all work.

The font was carefully considered as I knew I wanted a strong title with complementing paragraph text. Proxima Nova is a font that I am experienced with and I appreciate it’s many variations. Originally I paired this font with Garamond as I saw on a font comparison website that they pair well together. As I started to use them in my sketchbook and felt they didn’t look right with my work. This is when I made the decision to use Proxima Nova solely and its many variations. I like the modern round look it has as it looks professional and stylish.

As previously discussed, I started to develop my logo by introducing new shapes and trialling new colours. On my previous blog post you can see my first attempts where I was not happy with the shaping of the bottom ‘blob’, I thought it looked too triangular and not as sophisticated as I would like. I introduced a new squarer shape and a more round one, I decided the round version was much more flattering to the overall image.

I wanted to make sure the layout was perfect for this design so I changed the angles of the blobs to test which looked best. On one of the experiments I reversed the colours, which did not suit the overall theme.

I have narrowed down the logo design to the bottom two images attached to this blog post. It is important for me to see how these fit with my text on my business card and postcard. Therefore, once I have placed these into context I will be able to tell which design is best.

This week I have been focussing on developing imagery to support my portfolio. I knew that I wanted my branding to be simple, memorable and sophisticated because the type of job role I am aiming for is more office based.

I opened up photoshop and stared to draw simple shapes in hopes to develop a logo. I started to draw imperfect blobs of colour which I think represented me and the type of work I do. I like the idea that these are not perfect and therefore have character. I had seen a makeup artist complete a look with similar imperfect rings around the models eyes which I admired the simplicity of.  I have attached this image below to show my inspiration. I developed this look into coloured blobs and played around with the layout.

Overall, I am happy with the look of these experiments, although I think the shaping of the blobs could be more considered. I will develop these initial logos by changing their colour and trying different layouts to find the perfect combination for my branding.