Logo Development

Our group fragrance is beginning to take shape now, and although there is still so much to figure out, I am starting to get really excited about the final promotional plan! After meeting with graphic design students to try and get some graphics back to support our product, including our logo, packaging and bottle, we were very unimpressed with the results. With nothing but a few sketches, we could not go forward and so would have to complete this work ourselves - scary when graphic design is something I haven't done before!

I took it upon myself to redesign the logo, taking inspiration from the design briefing booklet we created for the students. I knew that we wanted something simplistic and clean, to represent our modern, male consumer. Previously we had spoken about Calvin Klein's logo, and something we really liked was the clarity of it, and so adapting this to our own fragrance, entitled Vivus Incensum, I began designing. 

Playing around it was clear that all of the fonts made the logo look very boring, and so I downloaded some alternative fonts from Dafont.com, and installed them onto my laptop (getting very used to following tutorials now!). This was actually much easier than it looked, and that way I can use my chosen font on future documents surrounding the fragrance. As we wanted something very simplistic using black, whites and greys, I decided to play around with the spacing and sizing of lettering rather than fancy fonts and colour, which was quite a struggle as I am used to creating quite quirky and kitsch visuals. But I enjoy a challenge, and am actually quite impressed with the results. Although VERY simplistic, the fonts and spacing chosen below really matches our brand identity well, showing clean lines and contrast between the black and white. 

I also looked at adding some visuals to the logo, and thought that a DNA strand would be fitting as the Latin translation of Vivus Incensum is 'living perfume'. We chose this as we want our perfume to be a solid male lifestyle fragrance that works around them, rather than them having to work around it. Life isn't always black and white so Vivus Incensum is convenient for the modern man to personalise as a unique part of their DNA, and so a DNA strand would express this. Below is an initial idea of how this could work, although I still need to develop this to look more natural - possibly by using a thinner DNA circle.

I'm excited to design more of the product, as although it is very challenging and something new, is an area I can really get stuck into and actually enjoyed! Next job - packaging and bottle!

Creative Concept

For the next stage of our fragrance brand development, we need to think about what sort of look we want our promotional images to have. I have always loved photography, as I studied it at A-level and found it a great way to get my creative side out, but when it's your own brand your wanting to portray, it's really difficult to know where to start. During seminars designed to create idea generation, we decided as a team that contrast was a key concept we wanted to portray in our promotional images.

Vivus Incensum is designed to adapt around the on-the-go consumer and all of their different CONTRASTING daily activities, particularly between their home and work life. The saying 'life isn't always black and white' really stood out as a key aspect which got the idea ball rolling, as it made us think about the monochrome colour scheme we used, but also the idea that life can be a suprise, and you have to take everything as it comes.  

With contrast as a main message to communicate, we began to look through Pinterest for visual ideas. We have always said we wanted Vivus Incensum to stand out on the shelf or as a promotion, and so a promotional image which is completely unique to other brands, which is not overtly connected to fragrance would express the exclusivity and desirability of or brand successfully. We came across three photographers who really stood out to as, and their creative concepts were all very different from each other and anything else we had seen; Susanna Vento, Miguel Domingos and Bence Bakonyi. These photographers used techniques such as studio camouflage and a picture inside a picture to create depth, texture and a narrative to their images which cannot always be exactly explained (it depends on the person who views them!) 

To get all our ideas down in one place, we created a moodboard which we will further use to decide what we want our artistic direction to be during our shoot time. 

Whilst it's still early days, I'm really enthusiastic about this part of the module, and really looking forward to combining these ideas to appeal to our business male consumer. I think the contrast idea will really contrast the competition (excuse the pun) and work well with our unique and futuristic fragrance product.