We use brands to project who we want to be in the world, how we want people to perceive us, and how we want to feel about ourselves. – Debbie Millman
For the past few weeks, I have been looking into branding my thesis. My first impression was this is going to be a piece of cake and I will be able to complete it very soon. I soon realized that it was a lot of work, even though I stuck to the bare necessities of branding.
It first starts with a name. A product name. A name that you can be proud of, easy to say and easy to remember. I decided to create a mini Slack group amongst my classmates to decide on some of the options I had in mind. Just the deciding of the name took more than a week. Finally, a majority voted on just one name and which was Anchor. It was easy to remember and it had a positive and literally a heavy meaning to it.
Naming my thesis through Slack
Thesis name: Anchor (check)
Next was deciding on the color palette and typography. I was advised by Molly, a visual designer in New York City to create a color palette for Anchor. My product was useful during emergency situations, but I really didn’t want my colors to match red, orange or yellow. I wanted my colors to express happiness and warm-y feelings. I created some variations that had lighter colors of the emergency tone and one complete opposite.
Working on color palettes
Thesis color palette (check)
Then the final and main piece which was the logo. This was my least favorite task only because creating logos was not my forte. I was trying to play on the word, Anchor and have some hint of a lamp post, grid or network. I tried many variations, but nothing screamed, a-ha! My VD advisor helped me to narrow down some of the styles and iterate on a couple. And after days and days of sketches and iteration, I now have a logo.
Sketches of Anchor logo
Voila! Introducing Anchor.
Anchor logo
