Whats happening folks? I’m James, a designer based in the UK. I don’t write often, but felt I needed to spill out some of my thoughts and feelings and all that jazz. Specifically, this post will be dedicated to a company that i’ve been working with for the last 7–8 months.
I’ve been working with a company every week for the last 7–8 months. The company is called Bee Inspired Clothing and they’re based in Glasgow, Scotland. They are a mens clothing brand that sell super-comfortable* t-shirts, jeans, tracksuits and much more. I can vouch for this as they always sort me out with a bag of goodies from time to time!
I first came to know of Bee Inspired when my girlfriend started working with them. She actually became one of their first employees! As they were rapidly growing and selling across the UK, they asked for some help redesigning their logo/brand mark that would be used across their entire collection of clothes/hats and other brand material. This was something that was completely out of my comfort zone as I usually only get website/user-interface type projects. However, I was excited about the challenge.
I hadn’t done many brand/mark designs previously, so I was a bit skeptical and nervous that I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything that they liked. I used my trusty pen and paper and started drawing some ideas down. After a night of drawing lots of different ‘Bee’ concepts, one stuck out. It was a solid mark that would be bold, sharp and distinguishable. I quickly got into Sketch and started trying to vectorise the idea from paper. I quickly learned that not every drawing you come up with is easily replicated into vector format. Early into drawing some of the shapes, I swear I grew some grey hairs! The joys of being a perfectionist. After feedback, bouncing back and forth from one of the ideas we arrived at a final mark that we were all happy with!
The logo, in my opinion, does a good job at being bold and immediately eye catching. I feel the strength in the wings/legs do a much better job at being recognised as a 🐝. Not only that, the logo also plays really well on the clothes which was obviously a massive point to consider when coming up with this redesigned brand mark.
After finalising the logo and sending it over. The boys at Bee Inspired asked me if I would like to continue working with them on building the brand. This would consist of redesigning their website and mobile experiences — however more on that in another post maybe. They also asked me if I wanted to come on a retainer-basis with them and work with them every week on designing their email newsletters, that they send out every Tuesday & Thursday. Again, this was something that was out of my comfort zone as I hadn’t done much of this type of design. Fast forward to now and i’ve designed every single newsletter that has went out since around March time.
If you’re still reading this, I appreciate you putting up with my terrible grammar skills. To end on a bit of a bittersweet note, I will be ending my time with Bee Inspired this Thursday. They have grown so much in the last few years that they have now hired a full-time designer to come on board and help with the newsletter designs, as well as everything else like advertisements, print material etc. I’m a little sad, but i’m extremely happy for all of the team. I feel happy that i’ve played a small part in helping them along the way. I also can’t express the joy and happiness of seeing something that you designed like a logo come to life on clothing. Its a buzz! I hope I can work on more projects like that in the future.
Anyway, I want to end by saying a massive thank you to Marc, Robbo and Drew who i’ve worked closely with this year. I’m grateful of having the chance to work with you guys. Keep killing it!
PS- If you want to see more of the clothing you can visit the website at beeinspiredclothing.com — you can also follow them on Twitter: @beebeeinspired
