Haluka Yagi

Phase 2: Imagine/Ideate/Explore March 2-19

I’ve never sketched so many logos in my life!!

I struggled through the initial part of this phase because it really forced me to get rid of some of my unproductive logo ideation habits. Before, I would sketch small logos with a pencil and draw as cleanly as possible. I also had a continuous struggle with creating logos that were too literal, which I think I overcame in this mentorship.

After bringing in my first round of sketches, all three of my mentors told me that my sketches were way too clean and that what’s most important is whether the idea comes across clearly or not. I was told to use big sheets of paper and permanent pens or markers to sketch onwards, which really helped me loosen up and ideate at a quicker pace. They also pointed out that I got too caught up in logo ideas around roads/road signs inspired off of the name, and recommended I explore other avenues.

For the next 3 weeks, this logo-marathon continued as my brain cells slowly dwindled away, but it felt rewarding to find a golden nugget logo in the last few sketches. I am really thankful that my mentors kept pushing me when I thought was my limit but also helping me with group brainstorms when I hit a roadblock!

After I finally ended my logo ideation stage, I began developing buckets (1 bucket = 1 concept) of ideas.

The team recommended I also sketching ideas for hoarding (also known as wild postings) as I sketch out more logos for each bucket, which is a series of posters that demonstrate a brand’s visual language. The devices that are used in the hoarding could essentially be applied to any medium.

This was also around the time when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and although I would’ve loved to continue working at the office on Mondays, it wasn’t too difficult to adjust to the google hangout calls with my mentors!

After determining my buckets of ideas, Janice and Shanene showed me some of their old concept pitches to explain the formating I should follow for my next presentation. What was most interesting was cossette’s way of presenting a concept’s value/personality. My mentors mentioned how people perceive words differently, and that by adding a visual, it can portray how we interpret the trait as a designer.

One thing I struggled to do while building this deck was to make sure that my moodboards were cohesive in style. Usually, my moodboards are for me, or for an instructor who I can explain my thinking to. When building a deck for a “client”, my mentors mentioned how it is important to have a strong, cohesive moodboard that can visually represent how each concept would be executed. Making the moodboard took a lot longer than I expected!

I give myself a 9/10 for this phase, as I initially had a slow start to getting my ideas rolling, but I think in the end, I pushed out a lot more sketches than I had anticipated. After improving my ideation process, sketching for my other projects has also gone a lot quicker and smoother than before too! There was a lot of learning in this phase, and I think I adapted well to my mentor’s method of approaching a project.

Sketches

Concept Pitches

Phase 1: Listen, Gather, Define Feb 24–March 2

For this mentorship project, I had the amazing opportunity to work with Car Beddice, who is an Associate Creative Director at Cossette, and IDEA alumnae Janice Callangan (Grad 17) and Shanene Lau (Grad 18)!

At our first meeting, I was able to show my portfolio and get some really amazing feedback from my three mentors. They helped point out some things my portfolio is missing; one was showing how a brand could extend onto different mediums using a visual language.

They also gave me the option to work at the office on Mondays from 9-5, which ended up being an amazing experience! It helped me focus during the time I spent there, so I was able to show my progress and receive feedback at the beginning and end of the day. Plus, I got to know my mentors better, and was blessed weekly by the office dogs!

The three ideas I pitched to the team the following week were:

1. Inkswell is a tattoo boutique owned by a daughter of a classically trained calligrapher, who creates one of a kind calligraphy tattoos that have an exquisite meaning and look.
2. Roundabout is a community-oriented hostel in Vancouver that is targeting millennial solo travellers and urban explorers, who want to travel for unique and local experiences at an affordable cost.
3. Mush! is a luxury dog food brand based and made in Canada that uses locally sourced and ethically farmed ingredients to help raise dogs to be strong and healthy like the arctic sled dogs.

The team thought Roundabout and Mush! were interesting, and I ended up going with Roundabout.

The next step was doing a visual audit, which I initially mistook as competitive analysis, but learned that a visual audit is more about looking at the competitor’s visual language and brand. I continued on after developing the written aspects of the brand, such as insight, essence, characteristics, etc.

For this phase, I give myself an 8.5/10 because I got the deliverables done quickly, but I should’ve asked my mentors in advance about what format they usually do the brand development in, as I had to alter some of the work I did so that it follows the team’s usual workflow. I learned that asking questions is super important so I can deliver properly to their expectations.

Next up: all the fun stuff imagining, ideating, and exploring in phase 2!

Creative Brief

Visual Audit and Brand Development

This was the first time I really struggled with creating a mood board; probably because of the lack of direction, I had for my personal branding. There was initially a gap between just gathering design content that I liked, versus gathering design content that I would want to be recognized from.

I found that it was very valuable to get others to look at these mood boards, and write down keywords that they think of while looking at these images. The list I have gathered from my peers has helped me gain a clearer idea of my qualities and what differentiates me.

After creating the mood boards and gaining my keywords, I believe I have a strong foundation to work off of, and come back to when I am lost in the process of creating my personal branding.

I had an enjoyable time working with GDC, and with Sophie in my first group project in the IDEA Program. I find that I usually work well under design systems, and following them correctly, which ended up taking a slight toll on the visual design process for this project. I believe I was too caught up in continuing GDC’s current brand into the new website design, which was partly the problem in the original design.

I appreciated getting honest and constructive feedback from my peers, with the suggestion of a separate colour pallet for the student page. The thought of adding more colours had honestly never come up during my ideation process, even though I was aware of the feedback from the survey and my peers on the current site were the bright, aggressive red. Changing the banner colours changed the vibe of the website so much (much love for our class!!).

For the rationale of the decisions Sophie and I made for the revamped student landing page, a big part was making GDC’s visual look and tone of voice friendlier. This meant introducing the light blue and yellow into the colour scheme, adding illustration banners and iconography, including testimonials, and making the overall information much more digestible

Students are often impatient and when faced with a long long page with just 12pt text, we often decide to leave the page or to skim along, potentially missing key information. Iconography really helped to visually represent the information, while giving users a break from all the text in the page.

I would give Sophie and I a 9/10 for this assignment, as I believe if we were able to take more “risks” to make the website different earlier on during the design process, our execution could have been even stronger than what we had during presentation day. I believe our presentation went smooth on the day of, our prototype worked correctly with no errors (yay!), we executed the project to our expectations, and Sophie did a fantastic job with the illustrations! I believe this project gave me a good feel into presenting to clients, and enjoyed the whole process working with GDC.

Moodboard: https://invis.io/TYRJDNF7ABN

Site Prototype: https://invis.io/TYRJDNF7ABN