# Brand Case Study: Pura Vida

Channel: Flux Academy
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exdyep0d2JE
Duration: 39 min
Language: English
Words: 6636
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Exdyep0d2JE

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[0:00] hey designers when i was first learning how to do branding i found the most useful videos for me were behind the scenes or process videos where i got to see how other designers were really thinking through the process of designing an identity so in today's video i'm going to do just that and i'm back with another behind the scenes on a past identity project this one for a really cool costa rica travel brand [Music] hey designers i'm rachel and i'm a web design branding and freelancing coach here at flex academy and today i'm really excited to jump into this behind the scenes case study of a past brand

[0:42] identity and web design project that i did last year and actually the website has actually just gone live for a bit of a demo launch and so it's really exciting to start seeing how these pieces that i've been working on for so long have come together so i want to break this video up into a couple of different parts the first being the strategy and discovery phase that i took my client on to work out what exactly the story was that we were trying to tell the second part is going to be the actual designing and it's going to be how i got to the style and the color palette and all

[1:18] the fonts and all of those things as well as take you behind the scenes on my sketching process and how i got to the eventual logo and then i'll show you a quick look at the style guide how the brand came together visually and a quick peek behind the scenes as to the website and how that all came together and then was subsequently developed in webflow so let's jump straight in to the first part and that is the brand strategy now i've spoken quite a bit already on this channel about my brand strategy process and if you want to hear more about it and more about what i did for

[1:52] another brand you can check out the case study on ecru that i did a couple weeks back so for this brand when i was first doing this strategy with michael and his team it was very evident that they wanted to create a travel company or a travel brand that was really a little bit different it was really focused on those family one-to-one values but they didn't want to lose the you know the benefit of doing things properly he really wanted to establish a brand that captured the essence of costa rica the place that he loved so much had been to for many many years and it actually

[2:31] worked there and was wanting to showcase the spirit of that place to his guests and his clients but also wanted them to feel like they were getting that really personalized experience that felt welcoming tailored to them but still very family orientated in that sense so we jumped in and we had a look at a couple of key things and when i'm presenting a brand strategy to the client i always make sure that i do this over a call or i present via a video on loom for example so that the client can hear me talking them through the whole process i find that sometimes just dumping a document on their desks

[3:09] and running gives them way too much to sift through and look at and you also can't control what they're looking at and when so i find it extremely helpful just to talk them through the documents so that they can understand it so in this case i just reminded him of what our original goals were basically from a micro perspective which means just from a project perspective like what are we trying to do just with this project and then also wanted to link that through to his bigger goals as a brand his his macro goal so what does he want to do with his business now i don't necessarily as a designer

[3:46] have anything to do with how he grows his business in the future other than from a design perspective but i do like to chat this through with my clients so that i can understand how the design work i'm gonna do is gonna fit into those goals and making sure that i'm actually creating something that's going to be useful to him in the future and help his business grow and fit with the vision that he has for that business so that's why i include something like that then of course we just go through a couple of key exercises where we go through and determine the core personality of the brand for me

[4:22] designing brand identities is anchored solely in personality and now every designer will have a different approach for when they do brand identities some of their focuses are on you know standing out from the competition or whatever it is i think you know brand strategy needs to be holistic but from my perspective and how i have always designed my brand identities is by focusing in on personality i'm of the belief that there is enough business for everybody should you be unique enough and able to talk to the people who are going to resonate with you and you can't resonate with people unless you know who you are and so i use

[5:04] i i really use quite a rigorous program process to determine a brand's personality and i really focus a lot of attention on that so it usually comes out with a couple of keywords that we use to anchor the whole design process and then of course we go into understanding who the brand's audience is going to be for this brand we had three different potential audiences that we wanted to design for and we actually ended up coming we actually ended up focusing primarily on audience type number two for the design direction as these are the types of people they really want to target for new business we had a look at what that audience

[5:46] might value so that we can make sure that the designs that we're doing actually connect with them as well we went through positioning statements we wrote a purpose for them and then i just sort of finished off with explaining to him what the purpose of this phase was so that he could sort of anchor it in the way we were going to approach design the next phase of course was going into design and the key aspect for me would be now sitting with that strategy and having a look at some key words doing a bit of a brainstorm and then eventually jumping onto pinterest dribble and all sorts of other places to

[6:26] go and see if i can find some visual inspiration for this brand in particular i looked at other travel websites i looked at what other people were doing in terms of branding in the area as well as boutique travel companies larger travel companies i looked at lodges i just really wanted to understand the environment what i found was that there was a lot of the similar sort of look and feel and they definitely had a very typical sort of travel feel to them there was a lot of blue a lot of ocean and especially when you were talking about costa rica anything to do with sea

[7:06] adventures or anything like that then there was often a lot of this sort of very beachy feel and i thought okay so either we can we can do two things with this brand we can go totally off the nose and create something that is totally unique or we can stay in the sort of safe zone and play off that familiarity and use it to our advantage so the first direction i explored in terms of creative direction for this client was that safer direction it was really looking at a far more sort of typical approach for referencing what a costa rican adventure or nomadic holiday or would feel like

[7:50] and i say nomadic holiday because this was a phrase that we threw around a lot when we were doing the discovery and we we really wanted to focus on these people who sort of adventure around and don't stay in one place for long and travel is really a lifestyle for them as opposed to this being about a once off holiday so this was really focused on that and we i pulled quite a bit of references and then just started throwing them together on my stylescape here um and putting together some sort of things that i wanted to try i knew that the brand was gonna need big bold fonts

[8:27] they are a vibrant and full of life brand and i knew that we were gonna need some sort of statement font to connect with that essence and that personality we've got a little snapshot of what our potential audience member could look like and we've got a very fun fresh and healthy color palette there was also a focus on wanting to to sort of attract health conscious and lifestyle conscious individuals as well they really wanted to bring sort of a wellness aspect to their travel experiences as well um initially so really wanted to bring that in and make sure that we were sort of hinting at that wellness aspect without being too

[9:10] overt so also i wanted to bring in these badges and was looking at really beautiful clean layouts again with that wellness thing wanted to create a lot of space and a sense of relaxation and peace but also looking at nice vector vector-based icons and then i actually had this idea to sort of contrast it with some slightly more old-school things in costa rica these beautiful old towns and lots of places where the the architecture and the arts and the culture really inspires how people live there still and you really get this sense of authenticity and i wanted to make sure that because people are traveling there

[9:53] that there is a celebration of that um looking at typography and maybe some iconography as well this was sort of the first iteration i then took it a little bit further and we finalized the stylescape with this version where i brought in some of those words just sort of reorganized where i put the color palette um fixed the layout a little bit i wanted to make sure that i was going to show this client some sort of layouts to do with maybe a you know a stacked super complex um logo which could be put on a surfboard or something like that um and that could actually become like

[10:31] an art piece which i thought might be quite nice for them sometimes simplicity is actually not totally necessary you can indulge in certain situations and this was one of those situations where i thought a really beautiful totally over-the-top logo might actually work quite nicely so once that was done i sent that off to the client presented it to him and lo and behold he came back with terrible feedback he didn't like it at all and it's funny because in the back of my mind when i was doing the stylescape i kind of knew it wasn't right you know my research into costa rica and the cultures there it felt a

[11:11] little flat and it i just felt like i was missing some of the energy and the life that is found there and lo and behold that's exactly what he said to me so we jumped on a call and we made sure that we could sort of understand what he was trying to actually say he actually decided to steer clear a little bit of the wellness route and decided to instead go along the roads of passion a passion for travel adventure all of these things rather than the whole wellness route he felt that the the beauty of costa rica just wasn't coming through so i jumped back into some research and

[11:51] had a little look at some of the things that can be found there had a look at some of the itineraries that he'd actually planned already and took myself along a little bit of a virtual tour essentially to try and understand what the audience would be feeling while doing these trips to see if i could inject that into the identity and after some careful consideration and thought we actually ended up on this second starscape here which um was a completely different direction so here we we really have a celebration of the beautiful vibrant colors and contrasts that you see in costa rica and around that area

[12:34] there's lots of beaches but there's also these mysterious forests there's river rafting and cultural experiences and food experiences and most importantly the most vibrant color you'll ever see in your life and so i thought this brand would just not make any sense unless there was a celebration of that life and color and so we really wanted to inject that into the design going forward so i brought in a totally new color palette freshened it up brought some interesting illustrative elements i knew that some of the fauna and floral would have to come in here at some point but wanted to do it in such a way that was a bit

[13:16] different a little bit different to my normal style another picture of the potential audience but just with a totally different energy a sense of unity and adventure and being carefree and not necessarily about wellness in the traditional sense but more about you know setting the heart free on this adventure and then i was also very inspired by coffee packaging um because apparently that's a super big thing there at least this is what my client talked me through when we were going through our initial review so i was very inspired by some of these really interesting illustrated coffee packagings with these bright totally obnoxious colors but for

[14:01] some reason they just work the contrast and tonalities are really great so i thought this is definitely something we can look at looking at different shapes and bringing in maybe something a bit more simple we've got this really sort of reminiscent of a proper costa rican adventure with the forests and the waterfalls and then of course our lovely toucan which is totally symbolic of the costa rica area really wanted to bring in some badges as well and again referencing back to some of the initial graphic elements that we wanted i sent this off to the client and he absolutely loved it he thought this was spot on he

[14:44] had absolutely no changes and he was excited to get going on the next phase which brings me to developing the actual brand identity now in this phase it's a tricky process because my sort of rhythm in terms of designing tends to change depending on what's happening in my mind at the time and i think this is key for designers out there who are just getting started you know you can take our courses and you can take other courses and you can watch other designers do their work but it's key to remember that as you grow as a designer you'll create your own process and it's not a problem if that process

[15:25] changes even when you are a couple of years into your career like myself i still find my process adapting and changing depending on where i'm at depending on how inspired i am depending on how much time i've got and so really you know keep the process fluid give yourself enough time for that creative discovery and adventure into designing and creating and see what happens so for me the next phase in the identity process unless i immediately know what i want to create sometimes i do jump directly into illustrator and i get going with the font straight away start manipulating start testing ideas in in the vector program but most of the time

[16:08] i'll start with sketches and it usually means i'm pulling out one of my moleskine sketchbooks or even my ipad and sketching away for a little while in this case it was my notebook and pencil so you can see here that i started off with some initial typographic sketches i had this idea of creating a logo that was stacked all the different letters were pieced together and this was inspired by some of the art that i saw as well as just an interesting way to use the lettering pyravida is a really nice word and the shapes fit really nicely together so i thought this might be a really cool way

[16:46] to create a typographical stamp logo that could be used in multiple different areas so i explored a lot of that and then i was really drawn to the toucan and i wanted to do something that was still going to stand out and be quite different but i felt that this brand really needed a mascot it really needed something that you know a symbol that people could really remember it by i knew that we were going to go typographic but also thought this this logo is going to need an icon or or a mascot of some kind and this to me was pretty much about personifying the brand

[17:25] and reminding everybody that it was you know they don't take themselves too seriously it was a nice way to bring in the character of the place and also remind people that a lot of these experiences include wildlife and so that was a nice way to link it in that sense so i really wanted to play with the toucan i kind of developed my sketches a little bit further and started really playing with the different shapes and layouts and i thought well being inspired by nature and the idea of the perfectly imperfect i thought well perhaps i could start developing a toucan using the golden ratio and those circles

[18:06] that fit really beautifully together and see if i could create something with that shape um and so i really just kind of just kept sketching things and i often do this on one piece of paper where i just totally annihilate this one piece of paper with ideas um instead of trying to keep drawing on blank pages i find as a creative that a blank page is quite daunting and scary and so um being able to just keep drawing on top of the same stuff and on a page that's already got lots of drawings on it gives me the creative freedom to kind of keep iterating because one idea will lead to

[18:42] another and i'll just keep going from there so once i was happy with some of the sketches and i kind of had some ideas in my mind i went okay let me take these into illustrator and give them a try to test and see if they actually work so with that being said i jumped straight into illustrator and started pulling in the drawings that i really wanted to focus on and also just starting straight away to try and vectorize this text concept of mine and it didn't take me long to realize that it was okay but it wasn't great the composition wasn't really working and i just couldn't get these

[19:22] letter forms to do what i wanted them to do i thought you know what maybe i could use a font as a base but i didn't really want to do that and so i kind of just kept pushing it until i was alright with it and i was sort of mildly happy i also did this thing where i tested the composition by taking the logo design and actually flipping it around just so that i was seeing it as a shape and not just as letters this sometimes helps me get spacing correct for when i'm designing layouts in the sense so i really did push it quite far and i just kind of got

[20:01] a bit over it after a while anyway this is the part where i started going okay let me start exploring the toucan now you can see already my artboard is filled with finished designs and sketches because i start with something in the middle and then i design outwards like that and so my delightfully chaotic art boards as if you've seen the previous case study video nothing has changed this is how my process looks so starting with a sketch and then just bringing in these circles and using the good old shape builder tool to start actually creating designs um quickly realized that sort of the round beak looked

[20:43] way too much like a parrot so redid it into the straight beak look over here um and then i started bringing in color and started exploring what that might look like and it sort of developed from there and i started playing with fonts over here somewhere and really started bringing it in and started working with the two together started looking at what that might look like didn't like it at all brought a background in for the toucan and started playing with manipulating um some different nice bold type letters and and and what some additional elements might look like i had this wild idea to do this

[21:26] multi-layered type logo with like this three-tiered shadow but realized very quickly that the legibility of that wasn't going to be great started manipulating some other type this was a really great font that i found on creative market and i thought it really was a great base to explore something that was particularly unique and different but after some exploration and pushing that one i realized it might just be a little too odd so i looked at some other colors and just realized you know that when i zoomed out it kind of just looked it like looked like the typography was melting and for this brand thought it's not quite right

[22:05] so i then found a different variable font which was actually really great and formed the foundation of what became the eventual final type logo so really started playing with that more i brought in some of the photographs that he had actually sent me he'd been on a recent trip and had some photos done and so those were really great to inspire me and give me some design context to work with i played with icons i played with different layouts using typography and then i jumped in and actually started creating these badges and you'll see that this process goes all over the place what i had done

[22:48] during this whole process was i was chatting to him constantly we had regular calls and regular conversations where i said to him you know as he was designing his itineraries and planning what he actually wanted to do he was sending me his ideas and his thoughts and i was really inspired by this concept of these four destinations that he wanted to focus his trips around and i wanted to create a badge that represented each of those four destinations that people could collect essentially and so i started creating these that were referenced from the various locations and using the brand colors to actually develop those and then i really wanted to play with

[23:33] creating a secondary badge logo so i started doing that i thought these could form really nice sort of travel tags you could play with these on the business cards really nicely and start giving it that whole holistic almost link back to old school travel but in a nice modern sense and you know always i think i've copied and pasted the stylescape in about five times on this artboard always going back to my stylescape and making sure that i'm keeping everything linked and that it's contextual and making sense um and also checking myself for imitation now i know that sounds a bit funny but as you can

[24:13] see here there's a badge there that um that i found on a vector purchase site and i was worried that the badge was too close um i was worried that the one i'd come up with was just a little too close you can see here that it's got a bit of a different feel i was worried that mine were too close so i did actually go ahead and eventually sort of shift it slightly and change it up a bit um so essentially a stylescape is going to hold you accountable in a lot of different ways so that's what i was busy with there then i started playing with posters and

[24:49] textures um and looking at what we could do with imagery and how we were gonna sort of structure signage and things like that and eventually popped this little toucan guy gave him a body and popped him on a branch which i thought was really fun um also i wanted to play with these leaves and started exploring those but i felt that they were just too flat and so eventually what ended up coming together was this i realized sort of halfway through the process that vector illustrations just weren't going to cut it and i was gonna need to get some grunge and texture in there so i jumped on my ipad i did a bit

[25:33] of research to the fauna flora that gets found in costa rica and then also took some creative liberty to essentially create some graphics that i could then play with to extend the brand identity further than just the logo i jumped on my ipad and did those illustrations and then brought them into the presentation where i sort of used them to add a little bit more life to the presentation so this is kind of where i'm starting to explore how i want to present the actual logo and various supporting elements to the client now i use illustrator to just explore this because i find indesign a little

[26:13] bit limiting when it comes to just creative exploration and so i enjoy putting together this first sort of draft of my presentations on illustrator so you can see here where i'm sort of bringing in the various elements and i'm also exploring some different mock-ups and things like that and providing some explanations of what i've done with the logo this is incredibly important for the client because you can present this in person and i always recommend that you do either in person or over a call or a pre-recorded loom video or something like that but give them a written version of your decisions as well because once they've actually listened

[26:53] to you you might find them having actually forgotten some of the things that you've said and so giving them a written version is going to help them remember what you said when they go back and check the presentation at a later stage also if you haven't given them a recorded loom this is going to be especially important i do both anyway just to make sure that my client has got multiple ways of understanding my creative decisions so in this presentation i'm also giving them a snapshot of how i would build out the rest of the identity with all the different logo elements creating some badges and some different signature

[27:33] sort of variations all of these versions are dependent entirely on how the brand is actually going to be used in the real world so i've had a couple of conversations with this client about the different items that he wants to create for his branding and where items or where elements of design like this might be useful for him in terms of building out his brand so things like a favicon for the website business cards proposals itinerary templates etc so we're really thinking about those applications when building out the logo variations i do sometimes see that designers will just create variations for variation's sake and cool that's fun and i think it can

[28:21] really build out an identity and give clients lots of different versions to use which can appear to be of more value but controversial opinion i actually think that more is sometimes not better your clients aren't necessarily as well versed in identity and you know how to apply things as you are as the designer and so sometimes just giving them a simple logo suite with some you know logical variations and then giving them a guide on where and when to use those variations can be more valuable and more useful to a client than receiving a folder with 363 logo files in it it's just overwhelming it's too much for them and i can almost

[29:06] guarantee that if you're the type of designer who's working with smaller brands there's no way that they're going to have that many pieces of collateral that are going to require that many different versions of the logo so keep it in mind you're wanting to be useful and valuable for your clients and just creating more logos just to make it look like you're adding more value is not always going to be the case so with that being said some of the other elements i wanted to bring into this presentation were those badges adding some texture and refining the layout and then you can see i'm just sort of

[29:40] like literally just dropping in squares and things like that to try and create compositions where i'm going to explore logo overlays i'm going to have a look at what some of the the items look like over the top of photos over the top of solid colors you know what some of the patterns might look like or what they could do for typographic layouts what their marketing materials might look like having a look at different applications in terms of illustration and iconography different color variations and also obviously different layouts for the logo itself having a look at horizontal versus stacked you've got to have both when it

[30:19] comes to logo design just to be useful um i've then got sort of like a placeholder for anything else that i want to build out maybe i want to do another mock-up and i'm going to bring that in here i'm looking at different color applications again really just using this artboard as a way to explore different applications and variations for how i'm going to present to the client at the end of this whole process and so when it came to presenting to the actual client we we went through this in a video presentation he is based in the united states which in at the time of working with him was

[30:59] nine hours behind me and so it was incredibly tricky to get on the phone with him and to actually be in constant contact we were you know using whatsapp um to chat which i sometimes do with overseas clients because you know jumping on a call can just be too difficult whereas i could leave him a message or an email and he could get back to me when he woke up on his side so we were in constant contact but i decided to present the logo via a recorded loom which gave me the flexibility to sort of leave him to have a full week or two to actually review

[31:36] what i had said he subsequently told me that he actually watched the presentation about three or four times and had changed his mind about five or six times within that process and this is where i think a pre-recorded video can be quite useful is it allows the client that space and time to really sit with the design and hear what you said judgment free they can replay it a hundred times they can go back and listen to a certain section they can skip over certain sections and it really gives them the freedom to sort of sit with it and let it mull over in their brains before making a final decision

[32:12] so i think it's really valuable to consider but there is also huge value in doing it face to face and then making space for that creative discussion at the end of your presentation be mindful of forcing your clients into making a decision then and there on the spot you can actually hurt yourself in this process by forcing them to give you an answer whereas if you maybe gave them a couple of days or gave them a bit of extra space to give you feedback you could find yourself in a more favorable situation with a client who just needs a bit more time to think through the

[32:46] creative that you have sent through to them after some iterations and revisions we went through and just finalized a couple of things he sent me some super in-depth feedback where he spoke about some of his concerns about the green and the usability and so we explored that and then we also looked at some different variations of the logo type as well as refining the layout and look and feel of the icon or emblem and this was super important because he felt that considering the applications the original logo was just a bit too complex and might have a bit too much detail and wasn't really going to fit

[33:26] into a shape and this was one of the things that he really wanted the logo to be able to do and so i took his words to heart and worked my magic to create a different version of the logo or emblem which then included the surround shape and just sort of worked compositionally much better so i was really grateful for his feedback and grateful that he pushed me that one step further to create something that he could actually use we adjusted the color slightly and came out with our little pirovita toucan which the client absolutely loves and i've got quite a soft spot for and i'm now definitely can remember him

[34:06] and draw him by heart um i've been staring at him and working at him for long enough now so with that being said we sort of refined a couple of other things i had a look at some other type layouts and some designs was really just using the space to explore but we approved the full logo suite we signed it off and i went into export mode where i took out all the logos and started exporting them and made sure that i provided him with all the different file types that he would need for the process going forward and then we made sure to design everything into a style guide which is

[34:45] probably the most challenging part of a brand identity project for me now i'm incredibly passionate about style guides but i do find them quite difficult to sit down and do they require a lot of creative energy from me and a lot of thought goes into them as well as time but they are worth it because this is what helps the client maintain the brand and make sure that he's using all of the assets that we provide for him in the best possible way so in this document i'm going through and i'm talking him through all the different logo types and how to use them the spacing that's required the

[35:26] different sizing of all the logos and the icons emblems and badges and giving them names and helping him to understand how all of it works giving him all of his graphic elements his illustration files that i went ahead and created for him as well as showing him how the logos are going to apply across various applications then we've got a full color palette breakdown what he's going to use with when it comes to tints we've got typographic layouts patterns and graphic systems and of course collateral design as well in terms of showing him how you know the various business cards and things like that should be designed

[36:07] these are all elements that were approved at a later stage and then added to the style guide as we sort of finished up the identity design process and then the final phase of the design project was of course the website and jumping into my xd document here you can see that my web design process is almost just as chaotic as my identity design process now this of course has already gone through all of the wireframing and user planning stages and this is just the static design i think i sat with this homepage design for about two solid weeks before i eventually came up with how i wanted to

[36:50] translate this brand identity into a beautiful simple and easy to use website you can see i'm sitting here designing all the different card layouts and how i'm going to implement the icon usage what i want to do about buttons and full scale images how we're going to use the typography a different logo layouts the illustrative elements making sure that i stick to my layout grid working out how i'm going to bring in custom sliders and really just making sure that i'm happy with how i'm gonna implement fonts and different layering what my call to actions are gonna look like what my foot is gonna look like

[37:30] and this was eventually developed into what is now the webflow version of this website which has just gone live for demo so keep an eye out it will be live sooner rather than later and you'll actually be able to go and have a scroll through and if you're interested maybe book a trip to costa rica so thanks guys for sticking around if you are looking for any assistance or any help with your brand identity journey please have a look at our latest brand identity course here at flux academy me ran and our fellow youtube star matt all collaborated to create a brand identity course which i really feel

[38:12] gives designers the basics and a comprehensive look at the brand identity process from start to finish and it's really going to give you those extra steps that you need to fill in the gaps for creating brand identities for clients so make sure to check that out if it's something that you're interested in and if you decide to buy i'll see you on the other side for coaching and support in the community if you want to see more branding content then make sure to let us know in the comments below and if you have any questions also leave them down below in the comments i'll be checking

[38:43] them out and sending you my replies be sure to like and subscribe and we'll see you soon cheers [Music] you

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