In Finnish, our name, Lumi, means snow. We chose it because it spoke to our originality and identity. It set us apart from other agencies and fortified the fact that we bring a little something different to the table. This distinct identity is something that all brands have to find for themselves (or with a little help from some people like us). Because just like snowflakes, every brand should be completely unique to itself.
Ok sure, this comparison may seem a little far out. But consider that brands and snowflakes both start out small. They are tiny little particles and wishes that will one day fully form & eventually make their way to their final destinations. Every snowflake and brand takes different paths to get to where they’re supposed to be. But taking the time to understand who your brand is now and who you want your brand to be in the future is paramount to successful branding.
Brands have different physical appearances just like snowflakes. Through fonts, shapes, colors, textures, and design elements, brands can communicate their tone and way of being. These visual pieces are converged into one system that effectively communicates and emotes with everyone interacting with it.
The inspiration board is a collaborative effort between our client and our creative team. This will be used as the main point of reference to begin designing a logo.
BUILDING A BRAND, LIKE BUILDING A SNOWMAN REQUIRES TEAMWORK
Serious or funny? Professional or casual? Loud or soft? When we have considered, discussed, and gathered these bits of the brand’s personality, we can begin the path to brand inspiration. We start to gather visuals, font references, photography styles, color pallets, and other logos. These visual pieces become the visual toolbox for a brand.
With a toolbox at your disposal you can begin the transformative process of making the brand’s core elements visible. This toolbox is completely collaborative. It is the result of our internal creative team getting into a room with our client and digging through visuals, providing honest opinions about likes and dislikes, down to miniscule details. We decide for example whether brand colors will be bright over muted. Or if fonts will be bold and or in all capital letters. Are rounded shapes preferred over right angles? Will photography include dogs but not cats? You get the idea.
Final logo among multiple other concepts that didn’t make the cut in creative critiques.
SOME SNOW STICKS, SOME MELTS
A huge piece of effective branding is an incredible logo. Creating a logo is kind of like a snowball. This stage of branding is where all of the pieces come together. It’s the time to put pencil, pen, or marker to paper and create. Our designers start to sketch ideas and figuratively build the “snowball’ that is the logo in this stage. As we’re molding the logo, it isn’t too uncommon to take a new direction that wasn’t thought of when discussing the initial identity toolbox. After the sketching and re-sketching on paper, it’s time to move onto the computer screen. The process of reshaping, tweaking, re-coloring, and texturizing begins. Once there are enough concepts to discuss, we internally begin critiquing the digital concepts. Here, fonts and color options begin to add depth to the logo mark itself. After many layers of creative (literally layers of imagery, fonts, and colors stacked in Adobe Illustrator), we narrow down the best handful of branding options to present to our client.
The main logo mark with final color palette and fonts.
HITTING THE GROUND AND GETTING DEEP
Next, our copywriting team will develop a description and explain the symbolism of the identity system for clients that are left-brained. Showing off a logo on a two dimensional screen or paper doesn’t do it justice, so our designers show mockups on materials like business cards, social media profiles, and employee uniforms. We want to ensure our client can visualize how this logo can really be used. The brand identity toolkit that is delivered to our client is a complete system of fonts, colors, patterns, icons, photos, and illustrations meant to support the logo and present a strong, consistent, graphically cohesive brand in any format.
Branding toolkits include logo variations and uses, color palettes, fonts, and much more.
Beyond creating a brand identity toolkit, LUMI Marketing & Creative takes brand identity systems to the next level through:
Campaign Creation
Social Media Management & Creation
Advertisement & Promotional Design
Website Design & Development
We’ll create your vision and bring it to light! Fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch:
