Design Language
shrekahnth
Developed a new design language for a fashion brand ‘Shrekahnth’ based in Dubai. Since its inception in 2010, the brand had been catering to the elite women in the middle- east through B2B channels. The challenge was to give the brand a fresh look to compete in the global market and launch itself as a retail player with online presence.
My Role
Visual Designer
Team
Solo Project
Duration
4 months
Tasks
- Research on the client
- Creating a new design language
- Logo Design
- Corporate colors and Fonts
- Brand Docket
Tools
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Pencil, paper and sharpie
- E-mails
process summary
Learning about the client
The client on this project is Shrekahnth, a luxury designer brand of fashion. The client is based in Dubai, UAE. Due to the different time zones, the research was done remotely through detailed emails and phone conversations involving a lot of questions.
- What is ‘Brand Shrekahnth’?(In terms of size of the company, stakeholders, employees, teams, revenues, retail points and past activities.)
- What is the current brand strategy?
- What is working for the brand and what isn’t?
- What are the communication goals of the brand?
- Who are the customers?
- What is the product offering?
- Who are the competitors?
- How does the company reach it’s audience?
- Is there any visual material to look at?
- What is the timeline?
getting the direction
The brand has its presence in Dubai, in stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Harvey Nichols, Sauce and Symphony. For the next 5 years, the vision is to establish the brand as 100% environmentally sustainable and futuristic at the same time. The brand intends to have a strong hold in the middle east and penetrate the Indian, Asian and American markets. It also plans to channel huge investments in its online store.
The retail will have a mix of all categories from sweatshirts of $100 to evening wear of $1000. The brand is competing with the likes of Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, Matthew Williamson and JW Anderson. The company reaches it’s audience through print and digital communications. Magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue; and social networking services like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, are among the main channels coupled with celebrity seeding.
Going forward, the main communication goals for the brand would be
- Environmentally sustainable
- Futuristic/modern
- Timeless fashion
- Luxury
Logo
Phase 1 - The Wordmark
The re-design processs started with the brand’s original logo. The idea was to come up with some fresh options along the lines of the inspirational logos that the client shared.
Reference Logos
The new logo needed to be clean and simple. It needed to be distinct and memorable. A simple list of the word ‘SHREKAHNTH’ in various fonts was a good starting point.
We narrowed down to some fonts we liked. The client suggested we go with the same font that we would use for our website. But, I shared with them a few examples of logos that were different from the other content on the page and how these logos stood out and helped in strengthening the brand image and recall. This helped in convincing the client and we tried some creative options.
We chose the Krungthep font with some variations in kerning and cap-height. It had some character and personality. We thought it was perfect…
…until, I started the work on the monogram logo. This logo had no reference available. The communication goals were a good place to start. And then, began a beautiful journey.
Phase 2 - The Monogram
Among the logos, few were geometric, few were fluid. Some looked more for fashion and luxury and some looked timeless. They all had the initial ‘S’ in them. I shared some of the logos with the client asking for feedback to see which ones could be developed further.
The client liked the circled one too. They also expressed that the logo needed to be very flexible in terms of usage and placement for a fashion brand. They wanted to see more geometric forms. Here we enter the next phase.
Phase 3 - Geometric forms
Here we see some geometric compositions. Of the lot, I chose 3 designs and developed them further with variations for each. These were sent to the client for approval.
The client approved the third design. This was developed into the corporate logo.
Phase 4 - Defining the Monogram
The monogram for the fashion label had to be dynamic to be able to render itself onto the various media that it would be used with. What followed was a process to develop and effectively communicate this strategy.
Phase 5 - wordmark revision
CORPORATE COLORS
When choosing the corporate colors, we wanted white, black, greys and one accent color that stands out. We chose caribbean green as it combined futuristic, environmental and timeless emotions. It also acted as a great pop of color.
Design Language
With all the elements in place, we could arrive at defining the look and feel of the brand. A detailed design tool kit was developed, which will provide a thorough guideline for SHREKAHNTH’s visual identity.
