Week 5
20/10/08
DESIGNING A BRAND
I thought it was about time I got round to setting up a proper portfolio site that wasn't my university space. While sitting in another module lecture I drew up a quick mock logo idea. Being of the red haired appearance I thought why not use this as my name. So I came up with 'Red Head Media' at first.
Red Head Studio
I couldn't go with RedHeadMedia as the domain was already registered to someone else. I decided to change the 'Media' to 'Studio'. I purchased the domain name and set about creating some sort of logo for the site. I tried a few different designs using Illustrator that looked similar to the quick sketch I had drawn. I couldn't decide on a final design so I changed it and went for a more typograhic brand style. I found a font on my laptop called 'Levenim MT'. I played about with various sizes and layouts. I rounded the edges of the word red to stand out from the other words.
I then added a little head logo to go with the text. I found this in a set of vectors I had. The vector set has a 'Non-Commercial Creative Commons' license. If I intend to use this new portfolio site for commercial work I will have to change the logo or make my own. But for the time being I will use it. I think it looks very effective with the text and not too over the top. It will probably change over the coming weeks to get it looking better and more original.
I changed the look of my student portfolio site once I had created the logo. It looks a lot different and promotes the new site which should be up and running soon. I made the wood background using a tutorial I found on Vector Diary. I'll hopefully start using some javascript libraries such as MooTools and JQuery in the site and any other techniques I've picked up.
Lytebox Now Added
After trying out a few different types of image viewers I chose to go with Lytebox. It's a really easy piece of javascript that takes two minutes to implement onto your images on your site. It makes such a difference to the overall feel and look.
