own business branding

I believe passion is the basis of all success.

Three years ago I mixed my passions (Photography, Graphic Design, Art Direction and Hospitality) and started working for hotels, villas and restaurants in Indonesia. Then I did the same in Western Australia. I stopped it a bit when I moved to Byron, here I'm busy studying and making other things that make me grow too. However, I've been wanting to start a hospo focused creative agency that designs brand identities and does photography for hotels, restaurants, food and drinks brands, etc.

I've been using my signature as a logo for a few years and I still like it, I think it still fully represents me. That's what I want to reach in everything I design: timelessness. I made it by scanning my signature and vectorising it in Illustrator. I find handwriting so powerful: each person has their own, there's no two people in the world that have the exact same style.

However, I didn’t have an established brand identity. I kept using different fonts and changing the design of my invoices all the time. I really needed to define the character of my own brand and its visual identity. This project was the perfect occasion to work on it.

Key words to define my style/brand/values? open-minded, groundbreaking, creative, passionate, coherent, friendly.

Three weaknesses? Disorganisation, lack of commitment (when I work by myself), which leads to not meeting the timings.

Three strengths? ease to understand concepts, quality results, close relation with client.

What do I want to do? Graphic Design (mainly branding, which also includes illustration), Photography and Art Direction for Hospitality/Food and beverage businesses and/or businesses who I share values with.

LOGO

SUBMARK

RESUME

BUSINESS CARD

sliced text

I find learning these kinds of techniques very useful as it makes it so easy for us - designers - to communicate. In this case I used the sliced text in a literal way to refer to the separation of Berlin in a poster or book cover. I used the Capitalist colours for the top text slice and the Communist ones for the bottom part representing the political division.

AGDA Newsletter

This project has taught me many things about inDesign that I didn't know before. I thought a designer could just be either an Illustrator lover or an inDesign lover. After doing this project I've realised I'm not the unconditional Illustrator supporter I thought I was: I've just been an ignorant bully at inDesign all this time. Now I understand why Adobe created both.

I love flipping through magazines - sometimes more for the design than the content - and I find it exciting to see creative layouts. I also find pleasing the structure of paragraphs, the different font combinations and the way images are used or chosen.

I did a bit of research on AGDA so I could identify some characteristics of their visual identity to start designing. We weren't expected to use their brand guidelines for the newsletter but I still adapted to their minimalism.

rebranding & repackaging

I love ginger. Every time that I go to the supermarket and see a product that contains ginger that I haven't tried before, I buy it. And that's exactly what happened on my first day living in Byron Bay. I went to IGA and saw the Ginger Necktar drink in the fridge by the counter. A ginger nectar drink sounded like the most delicious thing ever, even though that plastic packaging and old-fashioned branding didn't appeal to me at all. "What a shame", I thought. Then, I got confused by the spelling of the word necktar. "It could be a good technique to catch people's attention".

Besides the negative image I got from the packaging, I could feel it was obviously a small business and its outdated visual identity + tone of voice + "Byron Bay based" was somehow telling me there was a lot of care put into that drink, which made me think of quality. I went to the checkout, $5 for a 375ml bottle. Wasn't cheap either. There were two other formats available (1l and 2l bottles) and two other flavours (ginger 'blast' and cranberry). I got home and read the whole label while tasting the product. I wasn't wrong in my guesses about the brand. I liked the drink, a bit too much honey for my taste, but I could definitely feel how it was an unprocessed product.

Since then, I've felt helpless every time I've seen the product on the shelves. I wish they had a sustainable packaging that matches with their brand values and they had a powerful visual communication.

When we were told about this project I had very clear that I'd choose Ginger Necktar. Looking forward to refresh the look of the brand!

ASRA

This has been the first project we do for a client at uni. I think real client projects are the ones that have the most potential to make us learn, as we experience in first person what communication with the client is like and the importance of deadlines. There's a company behind it and not just our teachers. Our work may be printed a thousand times, or posted in social media, or shown who knows where.

In this case, I felt there were some communication gaps with the client at the beginning when the briefing was given to us. I realised that once I started working on it. Some titles were really long so we couldn't apply the guidelines the way we should, the way some articles were structured was a bit confusing, etc. However, Chris was very quick to answer our questions and doubts. It was a really good exercise that helped us with precision and attention to detail.

linocut

Learning the linocut technique has helped me realise how things were made in the past and compare them to how we do them now. Apart from art, we've touched a variety of design aspects with this project: typography, vectors, patterns and colour combinations.

It was very entertaining trying different fonts, playing around with them and analysing each letter so closely. How can we - humans -understand those shapes and communicate through them? How have we created so many languages and chosen a meaning for every single letter?

My motivation dropped a bit when I started cutting the shape of my letter - the blades weren't sharp enough. I realised it didn't have to be perfect, so I relaxed. After inking, printing, scanning and repeating the shape I realised my pattern looked like azulejos, the typical Portuguese tiles. I painted them in blue on a white background.