REVIEWING 5 AWARD-WINNING BRAND IDENTITIES

0:00what makes a brand identity truly brilliant and what can we learn by looking at some of the best in class that's what we're going to explore today by looking at some award-winning identity designs let's go hello friends my name is matt brunson i'm a designer from the north of england and today we're going to be looking at dnad 2021 award-winning brand identities now why do we look at other works well of course it's to shamelessly copy to rip them off and just pass it off as our own maybe not i think a better reason would be to be inspired yes people say that but what does that mean well

0:42we need to become aware of industry standards what are people doing in our field how do they present their work what applications have they considered and it's also a great way to learn design to learn anything by looking at the masters if you're a musician of course you need to know some theory about notation perhaps reading music intervals but also you will listen to great music you listen to bach mozart beethoven and i guess the beatles and radiohead these greats inspire us to what is possible and they open us to new avenues and we we remix it and we reapproach it with our own twist we're creative people so we're not

1:27here to slavishly copy but we're here to bring our own ideas so the key is to take inspiration from many sources not just one and when we look at great works try to reverse engineer and learn about design by understanding the process the more design principles that we understand the clearer we can see in great work how they have been applied and it deepens our knowledge of design so let's jump in and have a look at some of this work dnad pencil award-winning work for this year let's go the first one i want to look at is mahang studios who are the creators of minecraft and what i love about this work is that

2:10it's appropriate to the client so they're best known for creating this game where you build things and that whole concept has been reflected in the identity without just slavishly copying the same style as minecraft there's this brilliant art directed brand video that they've produced here in a film studio the production design is excellent they have built this strange contraption this weird machine here that conveys so many elements from elements of the brand there's so much detail in here you see the bits of of minecraft going into it and it tells you that it's all about fun and it shows them working here in indesign on the identity and that whole idea of

2:55behind the scenes construction building something is what you do in the game and they're showing that in the identity design too but again without copying the same style they've created this unique style which relies on this these glyphs that they've created for the characters that look quite blocky and the whole grid from minecraft has been used to create these glyphs that are part of the word mark they've 3d printed them this is just super cool it evokes a whole vibe and i absolutely love this they've really seen this through with a lovely color scheme it relies on this red with black whites and greys but then

3:36they do also bring in a little bit of these um these purples and yellows and stuff you could see that a little bit more on the video very very cool how they've carried this through consistently cut this lovely tight face which again has this sort of blocky feel but he's also a lovely modern sans lovely applications this is a great thing to notice watch the applications and the way that an identity design system is shown to be flexible they've created merch here they've even built a reception desk if you're not building a reception desk out of your identity design what are you playing at this is very legit so i love this thank

4:15you you're welcome thanks for sharing and this is the before i think we can say it's definitely better after they had this weird it looks like fingers pinching or something but they're on fire i don't know what that is but the after is a really strong word mark lovely work there from bold o n o a never heard of them agency from sweden good work the next project is trip advisor and this is a big one you surely know tripadvisor right this is a high profile rebrand this has been entered by mother who are a well-known design agency in the united states and like a lot of rebrands what they've

4:55done is they've simplified the icon the symbol the logo and they've kept the recognizable owl binoculars thing and they've simplified it and they've carried through the circle element all the way through the identity into the interface the user interface design and into this custom typeface that they've cut for the word mark but that they also use for all the identity work so they've got a whole range of weights and italics here lovely tight face lovely work great color scheme much more unique much more ownable by tripadvisor compared to what they had before and i love how they've carried this all the way through the illustrations all are consistent with the shapes and

5:45the colour scheme and it just gives a real fun playful inviting feel to it but very professional look at the professional details the stroke weights are married up from the icons to the type this is a lovely detail and this is what a professional very legit identity design looks like so that's the level so really nice work here from mother on tripadvisor check that one out and we'll leave links to all these projects in the description the next one is one football and this one a graphite pencil simply for the logo this is by design studio in london and this simply does what a logo should

6:26do it's simple it works it identifies this brand one football you can read the number one next to it the solid black circle represents a football and together it looks like a footballer kicking the ball with the leg bent at the knee ready to strike it does the job you can imagine how good this looks on a simple little social media avatar how they could animate it mask it it's a solid logo so nice work there design studio the next project is hackney church and this one a wood pencil for branding and i think this is a brilliant example i'm actually going to show you on

7:08the agency's website which is omsc a small agency in london and what i think is brilliant about this is this client may not seem like the most exciting client a church a religious institution we think of something that's quite traditional quite every day but what they have done is by clever thinking and a smart approach and really considering the audience they've been able to elevate this to the level of award-winning work and it's easy for us to think that oh maybe the projects i'm working on aren't that great when i'm working for like a huge fashion brand then i'll be able to win awards and do great work and be really

7:52proud of my portfolio but oms e have shot om se have shown that you can take the project that you have and elevate it with your creativity i love that look at this they've taken the shape the geometry that is within the building and from it created a symbol and for the church and for the other activities they have they have a brewery they have a bakery they keep bees they have a lighthouse that this is a bizarre organization but i love it and they've done a cracking job here with this whole system and it's very appropriate for the context now if you don't know east

8:31london this is like the hippest part of the hipaa city in the world right hackney includes hackney itself and shoreditch and they're really cool areas where there's a real mix of artists and young people and it's close to the city of london and it's just a great place to be it's a total vibe and they have reflected that in their work and i think that is brilliant these people look like they're actually from east london which i think is really cool and they've created this whole merch line a church with merch that is bizarre and also rhymes but it's an amazing job they've created different applications here for

9:13the website for children there's this whole 3d characters that they've designed this is just very very clever how they've built all these applications up all the way through and it creates this whole identity design all the way through you can see the arch and you can see the way they've used typography with this serif and sans that work together and it's a really pleasing solution so hopefully that inspires you even if perhaps you think my clients aren't on the ones that i want whatever client you've got if you work with them if you can show them how your creativity can elevate what they do you can bring about a great result

9:59although to be fair this church has its own brewery so that is fairly legit and these beer cans are really nice so great work there omsc and the final one i want to look at today is the san francisco symphony and they want to yellow pencil collins collins are one of the biggest design agencies in the united states they do incredible work they want a yellow pencil for this logo and the logo itself you think okay it's a nice looking serif it's kind of interesting how all the characters are different sizes but the real genius of this is the dynamic logo so if you see here this thing

10:38animates and it really conveys the feeling even without any audio of a symphony orchestra the huge dynamics that you get when an orchestra plays in a concert hall the quiet the loud the expression the low frequencies the high frequencies you get a sense of this i've done quite a bit of work in music and it's really easy to get into the classic tropes of like sound waves and musical notation and representations of instruments and it's very cliche and they've managed to avoid that here they also won a graphite pencil for the whole brand and again this looks a little bit better on their website so let's have a look on

11:22the collins website and you can see here some of the applications how it works in signage posters again this expressive type with these wild italics and different sizes are used for short titles and short headlines but where legibility would become a problem in this detail poster they have constrained themselves to using the same point size for the type and been really clever with with the mixture of this expressive type and just really nice grid layouts for the information so this is a great combination got to remember that symphonies orchestras are premier cultural institutions for any city this is high culture so they've they've made sure to do something that

12:08is elegant that is appropriate for this it's something that's traditional it's an institution but at the same time they wanted to modernize it and i think they've done that really effectively again nice color palette that introduces we saw how well it worked in black and white but they also have introduced some nice colors some some quite interesting range of colors to to again suit the the amount of expression that can come into music so i think this is fantastic work really really top draw stuff beautiful layouts clever applications lovely signage really nice typeface this very cleverly caught distinctive lovely elements here and one final thing is this

12:58app they've they've built some i don't even know how these things work but they've basically built their own software to generate this type so that the client can create all different types of uh versions of headlines through this little app which is super cool and this is a whole future for identity design so if you're interested in being on the cutting edge and being really useful and really employable then leaning into this software element and coding and being able to create expressive identities that the client can even generate that is a really burgeoning area in design so maybe something to look into really really top draw work so well done

13:46collins so hopefully these identity design projects have inspired you for your own let us know down in the comments which one was your favorite and why what was so good about it make sure you subscribe for more design tips and check out in the description links to all these projects so you can browse them at your leisure and the flux academy programs these will really help you level up as a designer and create work that you are truly proud of we'll talk to you soon happy designing