For the city branding project, we were each required to choose a city and create a brand for it. This project had two separate parts. The first part was researching our chosen city and creating a logo, the second part was creating a brand style guide. When choosing our cities, we had to think about history, geography, landmarks, city nicknames, what the area is known for, who lives there, and who the city is trying to attract as tourists. Then, for inspiration, we created Pinterest boards and added images for the overall feel of how we wanted to portray the city. The only requirements for our logos were that we needed to have both a color version and a black and white (or grayscale) version. My logo was already grayscale to begin with, so changing the coloring wasn’t a big deal for me. I picked New York City, the Big Apple. And I couldn’t think of a better way to make the city stand out as The Big Apple except for making a big apple. Using Adobe Illustrator, I made a series of buildings from rectangles, and then cut around them to form the shape of an apple.
The second part of the project was about creating a branding book and mocking up a few items to see how our city logo would be used in the real world. Our branding style guide had to include: our city’s logo in color and in black and white with examples of how the logo should or shouldn’t be displayed. We needed a serif and a sans serif font that we approved for use in our collateral pieces. We also needed a color palette and a pattern that could be used in collateral, a stationery set including a letterhead, and envelope, and a business card, and at least three mockup examples of how or where the logo could be used. For my stationery set, I added a basic city skyline border at the bottom of my paper, to match the buildings in the apple in my logo. For my mockup pieces I made sweatshirt with the logo on it, a phone case with my pattern on it, and a lamp post banner. Overall I was really happy with the outcome of this project. I can certainly see myself making another logo and branding book for another company in the future.
