Establishing an Identity: The Building Blocks
In this previous post I went through the intense, detailed work that goes into crafting a meaningful logo which encompasses Medley’s mission, vision, and values while remaining memorable and consistent in a variety of mediums. In this post I am going to walk through the next phase of brand identity development and the evolution of our logo to include a full color palette (print + digital), typography, graphics, and patterns. The key is consistency with room to expand in an intentional way that keeps the foundation of your brand top of mind at all times.
Color Palette
The color palette we ultimately settled on for Medley was inspired by the Partnership board. The rich teal (Tide) was the starting point and our primary logo color.
Next we needed a color that would pop against the teal while not feeling out of place. The burnt orange (Sunset) we settled on was just the accent color we needed. It is used sparingly when we need impact. It is also useful to have a good accent color in your palette for use as a button and link color on your website. It calls attention to the actions you want visitors to your site to take.
After the primary brand color and accent color, we needed to add some neutrals to serve as backgrounds and text hues. Midnight is a dark indigo which substitutes well for black while pairing nicely with Tide and Sunset. Fog is an extremely light, cool gray to replace a bright white background, blending perfectly with the other tones in this palette. Full black and white can be very extreme and jarring when paired with your other brand elements. Having replacements that are more in line with your other colors ensures consistency of tone throughout your visuals. Finally, we added the Mist and Shell hues to round out our palette and give us some lighter shades to play with. So far this palette has served our needs, but we are open to the possibility of needing to expanding it in the future, but only doing so with a lot of consideration and rigorous examination.
Typography
Typography is another building block of a brand’s visual identity. It is crucial to settle on one or two typefaces and create a system of weight, case, and size. The goal is to reflect your brand personality, but, more importantly, to be easily read and understood with enough variety to give copy rhythm without being overly distracting. Brand elements should work together in a way that feels effortless to viewers. Everything just goes together and the information is clear, easily digested and acted upon.
For the Medley brand we chose the Mr. Eaves Sans family as our primary typeface. We appreciated that the font has clean lines while not being too sharp or aggressive. We also enjoy the subtle personality in the leg of the capital R. When choosing fonts for brands we tend to focus on fonts that have a number of weights and stylistic treatments (like italics or small caps). This allows for variety and interest while remaining within the inherent guardrails established by the font family.
Like with the other parts of our visual identity, it is important to think through usage of various elements in different scenarios. Realizing the need for numerals with a consistent baseline, we added the Mr. Eaves Mod numerals to our brand typography.
Finally, we chose Adobe Garamond to be used in headlines. It is a classic serif typeface that pairs nicely with Mr. Eaves and works especially well on our website.
Once the typefaces have been chosen, experimenting with them in situations like a website or salesheet forced us to create usage standards that we can carry through any pieces that follow. It is all about allowing for experimentation and then documenting and remaining true to the rules you establish. This establishes consistency, and consistency is the number one most important trait in building a memorable brand.
Graphics & Patterns
The final considerations for our visual identity were graphic elements and patterns. These are helpful in adding a polished touch to printed materials and websites. To arrive at our elements and patterns we broke apart the elements that comprised our “M” mark. We liked the dots because they brought to mind an ellipses and the concept of waiting in anticipation for what was coming next. The slanted line from the M also created a nice graphic and crosshatch pattern. Finally, the wavy line references our name, Medley, and how our studio and services flow together with that of our clients.
Here is our finished brand elements board:
