Dec 8, 2020
Learning Outcome 4 — CV, LinkedIn and Personal Branding.
A percentage of the Editorial brief was to consider, explore and develop on our personal direction alongside fulfilling the main brief. In today’s timetabled University session, we were shown great examples of personal branding, many of which were from fellow peers where we both discussed what is good about their design as well as what could be further explored.
We also discussed the importance of our personal branding on being modern and fitting across all social media/web platforms in order to advance, make ourselves/products recognisable and to build our reputation. We were also reminded of considering things such as word marque, pictorial logos, play on words, acronyms, abstract iconography — again bearing in mind where the branding will be placed, but to experiment and stretch it further.
Seeing such great examples from peers and the tutors’ feedback and advisory from that had been really helpful! Before beginning this second brief I had made an acronym based icon for my creative Instagram account which consisted of the initials of my name (S.K.A), naturally. I had used my favourite colour palette an forest green, and a warm off-white. I also included the visual of a moon crescent where pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I associate myself with everything moons and clouds. I hadn’t at the time fully explored the possibilities for my personal branding as I had just made in for fun and temporarily, quite frankly. The problem I faced and still face is that I’m not quite sure of my aesthetic and/or my style of art which I want reflected in my personal brand image since I have not been actively creating personal work since beginning University — side note, that being a new years resolution of mine. To make more time to create!
Therefore, this session had been timely as we were set the task for the afternoon to make a start on designing our personal brand image. I had known I wanted a muted and sophisticated colour-palette that felt quite warming and flexible whether I choose to experiment with different art styles in the future. Additionally, I’d love to incorporate an important and distinguishable part of my identity in my personal brand, so maybe along the lines of using a different language or other recognisable aspects of my culture.
So, we were set to create our word marque, an acronym if fitting, and perhaps a pictorial logo to go with. The overall, as a pattern, and in isolation. Below is what I had come up with:
Above is the updated brand identity, where I felt the moon crescent felt misplaced, I incorporated it into the K of my initial, and had also used this in a pattern, forming an S with them. I also felt the cream I used before was too yellow/warm, so I altered it to be more of a neutral warm.
Earlier in the week, we had a talk with the lovely, Tracy Allanson Smith who is the Employability Co-ordinator at University. They had ran through an interactive session regarding all things, CV writing and designing, connecting and appearing on LinkedIn, essentially, all the do’s and don'ts.
I have had my fair share of experience writing content for my CV’s in the past but had never prepared a creative CV, therefore, this session was so, so helpful in confirming the type of content that is looked for in a specifically creative CV. It was also relieving to know despite not having professional work experience, work such as University briefs and live client projects are applicable here. Tracy had gone through many examples of creative CV’s with us which had been helpful for me to visualise what is preferred and for the most part, I was confident to crack on with the task of designing my first creative CV, considering factors such as type family, columns, font size, hierarchies, left-to-right alignment, use of colour/visuals (pictograms), amongst other considerations such as URL/QR codes if relevant.
(08.12.20)
