Article: From Zero to One (Part 1) - Establishing Our Brand
by Harry Chang & Lam Jing Xuan • 13 December 2023
Embedded Files
In the first of a two-part article series, Harry elaborates on his thought process behind the initial design of our club’s logo, before our Publicity Team took over and established our branding guide, along with refining his initial draft of the logo.
Introduction
Introduction
As written in my previous article, I was the last co-founder of this club, before our Founding Team proceeded to recruit our first batch of Organising Committee (O’Comm) members. As the others were already acquainted with each other, I initially aimed to take on a smaller role as Head of Publicity - taking charge of our club’s content creation and marketing strategies, including crafting promotional materials and designing our club’s logo upon starting our club.
In the midst of our O’Comm Recruitment, however, our Founding Team internally discussed that due to the limited schedules of most of the co-founders, my newly established role as a result was to oversee all matters of the club from all four teams: Curriculum, Operations, Partnerships and Publicity. As such, we had to recruit a new Head of Publicity alongside other Publicity Team members, before the newly recruited team took over my initial efforts in creating our club’s brand.
Our initial logo
Our initial logo
Before formally launching our O’Comm recruitment in May, I was tasked by the Founding Team to craft its promotional materials, including designing our club logo. Although I felt that I was not proficient with my design skills, I nonetheless took on the challenge to do so. Given the tight deadline of a mere few days that I had to follow, I resorted to using Figma without a mouse to design the prototype logo for our outreach materials. Here’s the result:
Prototype logo - seems pretty decent for a rush job!
NUS Statistics and Data Science Society (NUS SDS)
To share my inspirations behind this prototype logo:
The 3D logo design, along with the “NUS” carved on top, was heavily inspired by the logo above on the right, representing the main student club which I was a part of for 1.5 years. This was one of my main references going into the design - especially given my limited experience.
Given that digital product management mostly revolved around mobile user interfaces, the design was rectangular in order to resemble a 3D view of a mobile phone. But of course, the logo ended up being much thicker than expected due to my limited technical skills in design.
To me, a club or organisation only works well when all of its members are aligned together. Seeing its members as the building blocks of the club, I crafted the “P” and “C” letters such that they would resemble 3D pieces of a puzzle that could be attached together. Again, this may not have been reflected well, especially with the feedback that I received regarding the alignment issues in the different aspects of the prototype logo.
Colour wise, I chose navy (#01015A) - simply because it's a typical brand colour of an NUS entity. Nothing more complicated than that!
As one of the default fonts, I chose DM Sans as the accompanying typeface due to its simplicity, as well as how I thought it fit well with my prototype at that point of time.
Establishing our new logo and branding guide
Establishing our new logo and branding guide
With the recruitment of the Publicity Team in June, our Publicity members - in particular, Anirudh, Jing Xuan and Evangeline - got to work and proceeded to iterate over my prototype, while also establishing our branding guidelines for our future publicity posts.
Introducing our Logo Intro transition graphic - probably one of my top favourites! Designed by Anirudh
Introducing our new and improved logo - with a more detailed 3D outline and many colours! To cite their design considerations from our logo reveal post on Instagram:
“As the Product Management Club at NUS, we are thrilled to present our brand-new logo - Trendy, Sleek, and Youthful! 🚀
🌞 Yellow: Symbolizing Youth, Sun, Energy, and Enthusiasm - traits that drive our vibrant community forward.
🌿 Green: Representing Development, Growth, and Nurturing - cultivating innovative ideas and fostering a supportive environment.
❤️ Red: Embodying Community, Blood, Life, Human Connection, and People - the heart and soul of our club's collaboration and camaraderie.
🌌 Blue: Reflecting Ambition, Sky, Vast Opportunities, and Untapped Potential - where the possibilities for our members are limitless.”
Our established design system for our initial mockups of our club website
I also received comments from some of our recent O’Comm interviewees that the logo may be too colourful, and may even resemble Google’s! While I appreciate the light-hearted comments, they were probably right to some extent that there was no base or primary colour behind our branding. I guess this is both a good and bad thing! Good: because it reflects unity among our members from different backgrounds. Yet bad: as we may be connected to another entity in some people’s minds, instead of crafting our own identity.
Looking back, I felt that I should have just advertised our O’Comm Recruitment without a logo as I felt that I may have restricted their creative input. But nonetheless, I think they did a really great job! They even produced different versions of the logo, such that they are reproducible in other similar branding assets, as shown below:
A wide variety of logo variants to showcase the versatility of the logo
In terms of the typeface, the font Poppins was chosen to complement the logo, presumably to suit the “fun” vibe of product management we were aiming for. This was perhaps different from my initial choice of DM Sans, which I selected to promote a more formal style - which is still how our club is positioned to be - in a more professional manner. Thinking again, it seems that Poppins does feel more versatile in terms of emitting different vibes when accompanying different types of graphics. I may be wrong, but this is just my take.
A short Q&A with Jing Xuan regarding our branding!
A short Q&A with Jing Xuan regarding our branding!
Q: In my initial logo, DM Sans was used as the main typeface. Why did we select Poppins to replace DM Sans for our subsequent logo and branding guide?
A: As a geometric sans serif typeface with many variants, Poppins is versatile, readable, and has an element of fun to match our 4 bright brand colours.
Q: Unlike most brands or logos, why did we resort to adopting a multi-coloured logo? To build a brand, it is normally advisable to establish a primary and secondary colour instead.
A: Building on how product management is often known as the intersection of various expertise, we wanted brand colours that conveyed the versatility of what product management entails. Additionally, as a club catering to students of all faculties, the colonies represent our diversity and vibrant culture.
Q: We have received feedback that our multi-coloured scheme resembles the Google logo. How would you respond to such comments?
A: We started off our design process by considering the club’s mission and vision, which led us to these 4 colours. While it is a coincidence that they are similar to Google’s brand colors, the colors are more neon and bright.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Regardless, I’d say that our club’s branding was effective especially in suiting the vibe that we were aiming for - a hybrid of both professionalism and fun! Getting to play around with the new logos to create new branding assets was enjoyable, and is one of the many reasons why I was inclined to learn more about design overall recently. Looking forward to sharing more in our next article!
In our next article, Harry will reflect on his limited design-related experiences prior to starting NUS Product Club, and how his experiences especially in NUS Fintech Society as a Design Manager has influenced him to increase his involvement in our club’s branding and marketing efforts towards the end of our first semester.
About the Authors
About the Authors
#7: Harry Chang
#7: Harry Chang
Given his prior experiences in multiple data science and analytics internships, Harry is seeking to explore his career options beyond the conventional data analyst role, including product management and HR analytics. Beyond his academics, Harry has also contributed vibrantly to student life activities, including his previous leadership roles as President of NUS Statistics and Data Science Society, as well as Deputy Head of Finance in Google Developer Student Clubs NUS. Concurrently, he actively contributes blog articles and infographics as a Research & Strategy Executive at NUS Human Capital Society. He is also a (UI/UX) Design Manager in NUS Fintech Society. As our club’s President, Harry oversees the efforts of our Partnerships and Publicity Teams, establishing a strong foundation of our club’s outreach and marketing strategies in the long run.
#21: Lam Jing Xuan
#21: Lam Jing Xuan
Leveraging her past experiences in Google Developer Student Clubs NUS and Love, Bonito in UI/UX and product roles respectively, Jing Xuan’s specialty as a Communications and New Media undergraduate lies in prototyping and building our club website - which she has done so for the bulk of our first semester. In addition, her inputs in ideating our club’s branding guide has assisted greatly in our content creation strategies. Moving forward, she will continue to craft promotional materials for our upcoming events in our second semester, alongside her main role in managing our club’s website.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse