AirVault: A Branding Case Study
Concept project | Roles: UX Designer, UI Designer & Visual Designer
Overview
AirVault is a cloud storage, organisation and collaboration tool aimed at young professionals.
Visual Design Tools:
- Branding Research employing user survey via Google Forms
- Sketching and Brainstorming
- Logo Design and Style Guide using Figma
My Process
Research
I started with looking at the demographics and context questions asked during the course of my UX design process (find the UX case study here).
The demographics of the survey showed that respondents were mostly tech literate Millennials who were employed full-time from a variety of geographies, genders, as well as low and high skilled professions. They all owned a smart phone and personal computer.
I also wanted to explore the competitors so I looked at brands mentioned by participants; these were Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud and OneDrive. When I looked at their websites some trends about branding seemed to emerge:
- White and blue colours (accompanied by black, dark grey type colour)
- Big type
- A few words and short sentences
- Modern, simple font choices and layout
- Direct messaging about benefits
- Words: ‘Safe’, ‘Accessible’, ‘All in one’, ‘Store’, ‘Share’ and ‘Backup’ frequently used on the hero image or in the fold.
Sketching and Brainstorming
Next, I wanted to brainstorm freely around these words. This exercise also helped me think of possible brand names.
I landed on ‘AirVault’ as the brand name; I believed ‘Air’ signalled cloud storage as well as easy access while ‘Vault’ signalled the values of the brand as reliable, and safe.
I also wanted to document my thought process at the time so I wrote an in depth account of how I landed on the name.
I then wanted to create a moodboard based on this research. I started with a paper moodbard and looked into the imagery of vaults, clouds, storage and safety keeping in mind my target market, millennials.
Logo Design
Once again I started with some sketches for the logo design. I referred to the paper moodboard, as well as the brand name to inspire me in my brainstorming and sketching.
In the next step, I wanted to finalise the logo and the moodboard on Figma.
While my paper moodboard gave me freedom to explore the feeling of the brand I wanted to iterate on it incorporating my competitive research as well. I created a new digital moodboard using Figma.
I also wanted to pick the typefaces that will be used for the brand. Humanist type was chosen for logo because I wanted the brand to feel cool, edgy, and creative since it’s appealing to a younger segment. However, I still want it to look digital friendly and professional therefore I picked a Sans typeface.
I asked the feedback of a colleague on both the logo and the typefaces and tweaked the logo based on her suggestions as well.
Creating a Style Guide for Brand Identity
My style guide included:
- Colour codes of the original logo
- Logo variations
- How to determine which logo variation to use based on background
- How not to use the logo
- A colour palette for the brand
- Clear space and minimum size guidance for the logo
- A guide on typography for various types of text such as headlines, body text and buttons
- A guide on button design detailing different states of various buttons
Reflection
I thoroughly enjoyed creating this brand identity for the concept project I was working on. Moving forward the logo could be tested using Preference Testing and further revised based on feedback.
The style guide could be further expanded to include other UI components and logo variations on other materials such as t-shirts or mugs.
