These notes were originally posted as a Twitter thread.
For posterity, I'm posting it again here as a series of micro case studies.
for around a month I’ve been working together with Jimmy JIa to help him create a visual identity that captures and marks the core foundations of his project. This #thread offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process.
background
we started by meeting up weekly to define the concepts behind the group using prompts such as:
→why does JIA Group exist?
→what are the main activities of JIA Group?
→what are recent problems JIA Group solved?
as a result, we got these hints.
keyword
using the previous hints and through more conversations and meetings we landed on a group of keywords that would help us work on key visuals for the brand.
visual definitions
how are visually perceived the previously defined keywords?
the following board is part of the inspiration and fuel to start sketching and drafting marks.
we will refer often back to the board when evaluating the different proposals.
sketches
we use the following sketches as a starting point to discuss the direction of the brand. it was useful to discuss and uncover more needs from Jimmy Jia:
→want to move away from TJG acronym
→talked about applications and mediums
→shared references
new direction
after more discussions, it was decided to explore more the keywords of tension, balance and create an icon that would encapsulate them in a minimal and simple shape.
going back to the drawing board to explore shapes.
the spring loop
this direction was interesting and we started to explore the shape as a spring. here’s a rundown of the final geometry of the icon:
versions
one of the most important parts of the brand is that it could be used in different applications. we created different versions.
color scheme
for the color scheme, we decided to use an earthy color palette – inspired by the forests in California.
applications
it was a lot of fun working on the #design part of this project.
thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this.