Exploring Identity was an interesting course that delved into the identity of brands and the many components required to create a memorable and engaging brand for the user, That being said I learned a lot in this course, I previously in Belfast Met did a project that focused on brand identity, where I had to create a brand guideline for a in school club called Futures Plus, and I did not really enjoy it as I didn’t do research or really have an interest in creating a design for an already existing brand. That being said I enjoyed the choice we had to create our own banking brand, as once you have an Idea it is pretty straight forward, you’re just trying to make the brand the best it could be, which was my overall aim. But of course there was more to this module than the project there was the lessons as well which for the most part were interesting, coming from a graphic design background a lot of it is regurgitated to me but when there was something I hadn’t known it really stuck to me, I will go over some points I faced in this module below
Firstly I found it hard to create the name and brand itself, It took a minute before I called my bank XP, going through several suggestions and asking several people their thoughts about this name or that one, Through it all I’m glad I went with the name XP as you can do a lot with the game aspect and it helps appeal to younger people. I also would struggle with motivation sometimes, I would sometimes find myself forcing myself to do work which is never good, I was worried that this would impact the project itself, if you ever looked at my time tracking page you’d see I’d be working several days in a row for each class, so a way I tried to make it work would I’d typically do 2-3 hours in the morning/afternoon and then I’d do some work after dinner, usually 2-4 hours and then just chill which helped me prevent burn-out and project fatigue, I’d say this helped with the workload and helped me do more work to make the brand feel more whole. For the course there was the occasional issue and it wasn’t a huge deal, but I’d still have to deal with it, I remember I had an issue with one of the tasks and that was the typeface target audience poster task, I just didn’t get it and made more of a poster rather than a target audience sheet, so to make it up and understand it a lot better, I re did the task by looking at others and understanding what to do. But for the most part the course subjects would be easy to understand and I’d leave with something in my head.
I did enjoy this course for the most part, the subjects that I found most interesting would’ve been the colours and interface redesign (components). I enjoyed learning more about colour meaning and how purple can mean royalty in one part of the world and death in another part, I used that lecture to help pick the colours for my branding project. I also loved the components lecture, I thought it was really interesting and I enjoyed making them, I only wish there were more of that in this course, I enjoy a lot of the more technical work in the course and I only hope there is more opportunities for this in the future.
This was a fun course which allowed for ideas to be explored and identities to be created and refined, I enjoyed learning more about brands and what makes one iconic, I spent a lot of time on this course, both on notes and projects and I’m proud of what I’ve done, I’m now just wondering how am I going to top it! I should also mention that this is my first year done which is crazy, it really does fly by, I enjoyed the topics, making new friends and the work. I did have some struggles here and there such as failure to understand the brief which I learned from in this semester by reading the brief constantly, But overall my final outcomes, notes and effort. I am proud of what I’ve managed to achieve in this time period. I look forward to next year and will continue to develop my skills during the summer.