I love a good bit of branding. I'm slowly working my way around branding absolutely everything I can possibly brand. So far I have my branded boxes:
My branded stamp, for stamping everything in sight...
Branding also extends to the look and feel of your brand. I've tried to go for the minmal, trendy, simple feel. I created a brand that appeals to myself, a place I would want to buy from. Since I'm my target audience, this made sense.
This is an example of one of the stalls I did for the O3 gallery in the Oxford Castle Quarter. The event was called 'Just in Case' selling your goods from a vintage suitcase. I loved the concept of this theme and have now Incorporated this into the craft fairs I do. Event displays is still one of the things I struggle with just because there are so many possibilities I always want to do something different for each one (not a great idea for trying to embed an idea of a brand on people!) but hopefully with some more investment in time and money I'll find my style and be able to represent my brand in a layout that conveys that to potential customers.
I'm currently working on some branded jewellery which I'll be posting sometime next week. mainly because I love my logo.
My logo is actually my signature (I don't use it for signing anything anymore!) I first came up with the logo for a university project where I designed a smart fridge, and thought 'that's a cool design I want to put my name on that' (you can see the project here)
I'd seen Calvin Klein's signature in a magazine and liked the way he did the C. My sister came up with the name 'Christina Made It' which took a surprisingly long time to come up with. Other options included; Shiny Things, Christina O, Ag, Made by Me, by Audrey (used to be my nickname from when I dressed up as Audrey Hepburn one time, long story). For the text I wanted to have a relaxed and handmade feel about it, so I chose a hand written font. The colour theme of black and white meant I could use the logo on any colour background and it would alway look great in black and white!
Today I'm making myself a branded jumper mainly to wear for shows and events but also because I think the logo makes for an awesome fashion piece! So to do this I picked up a plain black jumper from Primark (a men's jumper, they didn't have any women's cotton ones. I like the slightly oversized look in an XS Mens anyway) This cost me £6 - branding really doesn't have to be expensive.
I had some left over dark t-shirt transfers from 100 years ago when I was back at school and we did this project called young enterprise, where you put together a team of people and create a business. We set up 'T-Promotions' making custom printed t-shirts and then custom key rings. Our business actually really sucessful, we made a profit and paid back a dividend to our share holders. I think this may have been where my business mind came from.
Anyway I digress. So I put the logo into illustrator fattened up the lines so they would be easier to cut out. I printed a test copy to check the size on the jumper and for placement. I printed and cut out the logo.
Layed out some tea towels on a solid surface (I used the glass kitchen table) gave the jumper a quick iron. Then the iron then goes on the hottest setting. While I waited for it to heat up, I pealed off the backing paper. With the dark transfers the image is printed the correct way up, so you don't need to flip the image. If you have a home inkjet printer, make sure you put the paper in the printer with the grid face down so it prints on the correct side.
Logo goes face up on the jumper, when I was wearing the jumper I marked on with chalk the position to make sure it was exactly right. Never put it in the middle of the jumper (the top to bottom, middle) as it always looks too low down, you want to aim for the top half. The paper in the pack goes over the image (you can also use grease proof paper if you have run out)
And then iron in a circular motion trying to staying on the paper and using the hottest part of the iron, the middle.
Do this for 60 seconds (longer if your image is bigger) then peel off the brown paper and voila, one very awesome designer jumper. Soon everyone will want one!
