Now I’m not one of those graphic designers who likes to constantly bang on about how the skills of graphic designers are undervalued, because actually I feel pretty much valued on the whole - that’s because of my lovely clients, they make me feel valued. Anyway…I digress….

This blog is about the thought that goes into design…showing that when a designer creates for a client, it’s not just about putting things together that look nice, it’s about creating something for the express purpose of helping the business to sell their product and/or service. Because that’s what brand design is about when it comes down to it.

CASESTUDY

The case study I’m about to describe is for a company called Lotus Education. Their brand vision is to offer training courses to women looking to build a self employed career for themselves that whilst being fulfilling will very importantly offer them a high level of work-life balance - time with their family.

I could completely relate to this vision, at that is why I started Truly Ace in the first place.

Part of the design process is to ask questions about the business, and the ethos behind the brand…it’s also in many cases to conduct research to ensure you understand the business fully.

During my research I found that the Lotus flower (and indeed the reason behind the company name) I uncovered the following;

The lotus flower originates from as far back as the legends of ancient Egypt and starts as a small flower down at the bottom of a pond and slowly grows up towards the waters surface. Once at the surface, flower begins to blossom and turn into a beautiful flower.

Within Hinduism and Buddhism this flower is a symbol for awakening to the spiritual reality of life; as the lotus comes up from the mud and develops its beautiful flowers this also symbolises personal growth and change - representing the struggles of life.

Chinese poets use lotus flower to inspire people strive through difficulties no matter how bad the circumstances may be - bringing beauty and light from the darkness at the bottom of the pond.

Another symbol of the lotus flower is that as the plant’s stalk is easy to bend in two, but is very difficult to actually break this has been used to represent a close unbreakable relationship between members within a family.

After reading this research it became fairly clear to me that the name Lotus had been chosen for a very specific reason - especially the symbolism of a strong bond between family members and the association with ‘the spiritual reality of life’.

After quizzing the client this was confirmed as correct. The type of women the courses were aimed at where women who want a career, but who consider family as extremely important in their lives, and that would want to facilitate lots of time with their children whilst running their business.

I went on to design the above logo design as my first concept, which was very well received.

This concept represents a Lotus flower developing (such as a woman developing in her career through Lotus Education courses) up from the bottom of the water and flowering up above.

The dominating colour of green for the design was suggested by the client and I concurred that this was appropriate because green represents;

Fresh and cool; associated with nature, growth, and hope. Source: http://trulyace.com/colourandsales.html

Although this design was well received the final chosen design is shown below - selected due to the strength and boldness of the image used to represent the Lotus flower.

Amanda

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Design Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.