This is a mini branding project to add to my additional branding brief. This is a live brief, to create an identity for existing plumber, Craig Dougall of Simply Plumbing UK. The company currently has no form of identity, so needed a logo to represent the identity of the business. This logo will be used on business cards and as a sticker for a van. In the future it may be used for other purposes.
It was a pretty open brief, with the suggestions of looking at vintage taps and vintage colours to go along with this theme.
Here are a collection of the images I have looked at:
It was a pretty open brief, with the suggestions of looking at vintage taps and vintage colours to go along with this theme.
Look at:
- Vintage taps such as victorian taps, lever handles, regent lever taps
- Websites used to find taps include haysoferroll.co.uk and barwil.co.uk
- Retro colours, limited colour scheme, different colour card for hot and cold
Here are a collection of the images I have looked at:
Developmental drawings:
These are the design boards with the different themes of ideas.
Originally I focused on copper pipe fittings, and creating illustrations of these on illustrator, based on the images I found when doing google searches to find different plumbing parts. I spent a while playing around with the piping on the back, and getting it to fit around the text. I thought these designs looked really good, but after thinking more about what I have actually been asked to create, I thought they were probably too illustration based, and not professional enough. I don't think the logo would be suitable to use at a large scale either.
The second idea was going back to the idea that was suggested to me, of looking at vintage tap heads. I tried to mix this in with the copper theme, but I found that for a professional business card, simplicity works best. With some of the tap heads, it wasn't even clear what I was making, but in the end, I got a style which I liked.
I think the simpler designs work best, and the grey background colour works well with the red and blue, which are slightly dulled to work with the vintage theme.
I think these cards will look best with rounded corners, to reflect the rounded ends of the tap head. To make these seem as professional and business like as they can, they should be printed on to thick 350 gsm glossy stock. These cards will be printed professionally, but before that happens, I have printed the cards myself to show what they look like in print.
Final business card
This is the final business card, which will be available in two colour ways, to represent hot and cold taps. This makes the cards a bit more interesting.
Final Logo design
As in the cards, the logo features both a blue and red tap head, for the logo, the tap head will remain neutral. This means the logo works in black and white, so would work across a range of media if eventually needed, such as letterheads, invoices etc.
Example of how the logo could look on a van:
