My Branding: Style Guide — Shannel Doshi

Oct 7

Oct 7 My Branding: Style Guide

I wanted to begin the branding of my logo with the help of my previous logo that looked like this:

I really like the old logo. There is something about a handwritten logo that added that personal touch to my style and identity. I am a minimalist and therefore my color use in the old logo was limited to black and white. I realized I wanted to carry on with the minimalist color palette but yet make it a little more interesting from my previous color choice of black and white. I came up with this relatively dark shade of grey, that yet managed to look simple and elegant while adding some flavor to my color palette.

My aim to re-design my old logo was to create something more concise, giving out a stronger branding identity compared to my full name “Shannel”. I wanted something short and quickly identifiable, just like the Nike checkmark which does not require the full word “NIKE”, but you can sure tell who this checkmark belongs to.

I then decided that the content of my new logo would just be my initials “SD” to keep things further minimal with a powerful identity. I was still in love with the organic handwritten type which gave me a more personalized touch and kept things unique from other logo typefaces. I drew inspirations from the images above and began drawing out the initials “SD” in various forms, strokes, and styles.

I ended up choosing one of them due to the curvy, organic lines and natural feel to the typeface. I compared this new logo to my old logo and noticed a couple of things. My new logo had more soft edges with thicker strokes. This gave an impression of a softer, more free-flowing identity. The old logo felt a little more squeezed, whereas the new one felt more spaced out. The more obvious difference was the letter “S”. My old “S” felt tight and restricted, but the new “S” seemed a more spread out.

I then tried inverting the logo with the grey I picked and noticed how it made me feel more modern and yet decorative. I like how the grey background was highlighting my initials, giving it a lift and making it stand out even more than otherwise.

I gave a styling guide for the colors and size of my logo initials in comparison to the background. This would help anyone judge how to use my logo for any printing or digital matter.

For the type, I decided to choose Futura PT. The san-serif typeface remains to be modern and seems holistic with my logo. It gives out the visual of simplicity and elegance.