Exercise: Chance Housing Association

This task is all to do with branding which is a huge area of design that I personally want to break into, so this is was a great task for me. To begin I highlighted the key features of this task and the estate agents specifically.

Chance Housing Association:

- Demographic is first time buyers
- Needs to be modern
                    - helpful
                    - welcoming to young people
- They want their branding to be recognisable and reproduced in an array of publications and medians

I largely focused my research on online estate agents, it doesn't specify if Chance Housing Association is, but I feel to have a massive impact on young people they need to have a digital presence and with the current shift towards online estate agents it would make sense for them to be one if they want to have the maximum exposure to a growing and predominately digital demographic.

These logos are from some of the biggest online estate agents currently on the market, my initial reaction is that they're very simple and focus on typography with small motifs and icons to compliment them. I think this is bang on trend with logos for modern companies. I think when young people and new buyers are looking to buy a house they gravitate towards more modern looking companies, and these companies need to appear established. Having a sleek simple logo will achieve that, branding is everything, if a young person is going to buy into Chance Association it needs to look trendy. 

These are two differant websites, the top is from Yopa a digital estate agents popular with young people and new buyers, the bottom is Bairstow Eves a classic estate agents in my local town. Both would get the job done and find someone a house, but the demographics are completely different, now I'm sure Bairstow Eves are completely trustworthy and serve some young people but I think in the current climate there is a lot of association between classic estate agents like Bairstow and greedy commission charges. I think the reason for the take off of online estate agents is largely centred around abolishing the need for commission that estate agents take. It's really important for young people to save money and if online estate agents are not only offering savings but also a platform that puts you in control of buying or selling your own house it often seems like the choice is obvious. I want to really focus on making my branding for Chance modern and sleek to achieve this.

From first initial thoughts, Yopa is definitely a more trendy and even inviting site. It has a big focus on photography and the layout makes it less overwhelming when you first visit it. I think this can make it more appealing to first time buyers, it seems more put together and professional, this is because theres thought going into the design process and time invested into how it looks. Where as Bairstow Eves obviously doesn't have the resources, its a pretty basic website and full of chunks of text, they don't have a nice landing page and its very plain and basic in terms of layout, the image used just seems to be placed with CSS and not worked into the design like the image of Mo Farah. Also that's another decision the company have made, they've got a recognisable endorsement for the company, now I'm not saying that's vital to appeal to a young audience because these endorsements are expensive and some companies might now have access to them, and you can have success without them anyway, however it goes a long way having when. The benefits are quite large, for a starters they add to the companies 'legitness' it can be quite nerving using an online resource sometimes as they can often feel disconnected to the real world and less trust worthy, but seeing someone like Sir Mo Farah being the new face of the company makes you more relaxed.

In terms of colour physiology there is two different approaches between the two respective companies. Bairstow Eves have gone for red, this is a bold colour and means the company wants to seem powerful and ambitious, they're also a leader in the market. On the high street this might draw people too it because you either want to buy or sell your house through someone that is at the top of their game. However Yopa have used Orange and Navy, firstly orange is a warm colour and means exactly that, the company is perceived warm and friendly and then navy is a very trustworthy and a dependable colour, these are the two colours I would pick if I wanted to appeal to new buyers as they want to be in safe hands especially when being online and having less human interaction to embody the trust the brand has to do that job.

Sketching:
To start with I began brainstorming what I wanted my branding to achieve, I knew that Chance wanted to be trustworthy, reliable, helpful and modern. I wanted to create a logo and stationary that went along with that. For me these were achieved by creating something that was clean and stylish because that shows that the company is in the 21st century so that ticks the modern box, furthermore when a company as strong branding then that brings with it the idea they're trustworthy and reliable, if you flipped it on its head, poorly designed products with know thought to design make the consumer feel on edge about the whole thing, it just doesn't seem professional. So the opposite is accomplished when you design something solid.

This was the first page of sketching I tried to think of as many ideas for logos as possible, I wanted to categorise the logos, so this was more abstract styles, I created an abstract key, which off the bat I really liked this logo it stood out to me.

My next idea was to have something using perspective, I still had the abstract theme in my mind because its fits with the modern theme and brand I wanted to create. It went back to one of my words inside the 'playing with words' exercise. For speed I made the 's' a road, I referenced that to create a street with two houses on it, I thought that was modern but also embodied a sense of community into the logo, which I think its important for first time buyers, they want to feel taken care of and that the estate agent has a community in mind. 

Also on this page I had two more ideas, the first was centred around building blocks, and how 'Chance Association' was helping to build futures, so the blocks where actually different sized houses. The other stemmed from a quote that sprung to mind whilst sketching, and that was 'Roof over your head' at first I thought it might sound like a homeless shelter, but when you take away the quote from the logo I designed I thought that I could change the quote to "the house people" which is quite quirky and doesn't take itself too seriously.

On this page I developed on my key logo idea and how I could incorporate that into the word Chance, this was also when I shifted some of my focus to word mark logs. The first of that was the word chance where the 'e' is a key. I also thought about incorporating the little flag that is used on mailboxes however I thought that was too American. Another route I took was using picket fences, I thought they were quite iconic in terms of houses and had a strong relation to community and to more  market houses I thought this might heighten the brand image a little. On here as well Is a small sketch I briefly did which had a ladder to represent the housing ladder and then it let to a picket fence at the end, but ultimately this was too convoluted and complicated and wouldn't work in a modern business.

I knew from the start that sans serif fonts was the route I wanted to take, they're impactful and is used so massively on the web, theyre also very sleek and modern and because of this they fit my vision. I tried experimenting with numerous different fonts and also having 'housing association' next to or below the word chance, I decided having it below makes the word 'chance' stand out a lot more and lets it be the main focus. I also experimented with having the word chance in all lowercase as it would add a personal touch. I also wanted to make sure that my word mark had something more about it. I know its a small touch but I added a small door under the A on one of them.

I then went a bit further into making a personal word mark, using script fonts. I went back to my catalogue of fonts I created in an earlier exercise to pick out some calligraphy. I wasn't to keen on these as I think that it steps too far over the line of being personal, I wanted it still to maintain some level of professionalism, I also think that because it becomes too personal it starts to step into family run type estate agents, I feel like script fonts work well in some cases, but in this particular task, they don't work. 

On this page I wanted to delve more into symbol based logos, something that is iconic and relates to the subject of houses and also something I can take away almost all of the detail until it becomes a basic shape whilst still retaining what it was before. The first of this was a roof which I experimented with and how it can be placed along side the word chance. I also had the idea of incorporating the number one with the roof as Chance wants to help first time buyers, now I thought this idea was really strong however 2 things stood out to me, firstly to make it look like there is a roof on the one you'd have to make it top heavy, and it doesn't look symmetrical, the next thing was that by having this logo chance is appealing to first time buyers but also limiting themselves to first time buyers as some people might see that as the only work with first time buyers. I wanted to create a logo and brand image that appeals to first time buyers but not exclusively.

Development:

 Out of these two developments I think the top one is my favourite however I don't think that it works after developing on the computer, with sizing for it to fully resemble an E it would have to bigger, and proportion wise it means that actual stem of the key would be far too big.

I think this one I my favourite out of the logos I designed, its fun and quirky and because it has a spark of minimalism it's modern and fun. 

 I also loved this logo I feel like the arch in the road is perfect placement for text and so the too can go hand in hand and bounce off each other. However because I think when executed the logo looks to plain and not concise.

The same logo however I balanced the road so it wasn't sticking out as much. I like this one better

 This has to be one of my favourite out of the logos I developed along with the face, that is because its simple and is exactly what a logo should be, I feel like because of its abstract and easily recreated nature it has the potential to become iconic once is placed in front of a strong brand. Its easily scalable and modern enough to not need a revamp any

I did decide to mock up up the picket fence logo but even with the font adjustment I just think it isn't as impactful and looks too complicated. For me when a logo has too many separate elements it starts to become less and less what a logo should be. 

Business Cards and Letterheads:

First I sketched out some little thumbnail sketches for business cards, I really wanted my business card to be very reflective of the brand, it had to be sharp, modern and impactul and also include modern and abstract elements to accompany my final logo choices.

Business Card Designs:

The main focus of these business cards is to create something abstract and minimalistic, I want Chance to be modern and this is often the first time anyone is going to see the brand so it needs to be representative of it. I also chose to go with Yellow and green as my colour scheme, these colours are very warm and trusting colours, I want the first time buyers to feel in safe hands with chance and I feel like this is the most important message to represent in the colour choice.

Mockups: 

Letterheads:

With the letterheads, I wanted to use the same design path as my business cards so they were consistent and on brand. There was so many really nice designs that I liked but I chose my favourites from the business cards and reconstructed those elements so they worked as letterhead on A4 as well.

Final Choice: 

For my final choice I went with the 'head' logo accompanied by the yellow waves as I felt this was the strongest, although the decision was particularly hard.