Directions in Graphic Communication Evaluation

For this brief we were required to rebrand/brand a high-street shop, we was given a list of thirty shops types such as fishmongers, bookmakers, butchers, jewelers etc and asked to pick one from the list. I was instantly drawn into the butchers and the fishmongers, as I knew I wanted to work with something very traditional but put my own spin on it with simplistic, sleek design. I started to mind map my ideas for both shop types but I had the strongest and the most ideas for my fishmongers and I knew that this was the shop type I could take the furthest.

I started drawing up logo ideas for my fishmongers without having a name for it that I think was a bad idea because I couldn’t properly visualize what my final logo could look like. Whilst researching into fishmongers I came across a list of historical/famous figures in the fishmonger industry, I decided it was a nice idea to use one of the famous figure’s name as the name of my fishmongers and eventually went with the name Dolly Peel who was a fishwife (woman fishmonger) during the 1782 – 1857. I decided I wanted my logo to be in a signature style as if Dolly Peel has signed it herself and so I could use Dolly Peel as a selling point throughout my branding such as thank you for shopping with Dolly and Dolly Peels famous recipes.

I spent a few days drawing my Dolly Peel logo in different styles and in ways that looked more like a traditional signature and more readable styles. I finally went with a style that you could make out all of the letters instead of something that looks like a traditional signature. I developed my logo so that it had more of inked/brushed look to it. I went on to develop my business card using my logo and the words Local Fishmongers underneath but I didn’t think its represented a fishmongers enough so I added the shape of a edible fish behind my text that had the same brushed edge as my logo has, I continued with the fish in the back of all my deliverables and went on to work on my window signage. I was looking at using a very simplistic pattern for my window signage that would be used to represent waves but after speaking to the tutors we all decided that the fish was not as strong as the waves and that it didn’t link very well to the style of the branding. I went on to replace the fish with the waves on all my deliverables and keep the wave patterns running throughout. After finishing all my work I can now see that the waves are much stronger than the fish as they can be used in many different ways.

I am overall very happy with all of my outcomes from this project and I think they are very strong and all link together very well. I feel that although my branding was very simple and modern you still keep the traditional feel that I was aiming for from the start because of the color-schemes I used. If I were to redo this project I would spend more time focusing on what deliverables I need to produce and focus more on an advertising campaign instead of spending a lot of my time producing that logo.