Soul Tunes is an online music streaming platform on a mission to make your eating out and shopping experience fun and enjoyable – they specialise in music streaming for restaurants and shops. The brilliant sound engineering team behind the brand hired me to do their rebrand after their 10th anniversary in business.
This project is an excellent case study of my creative process which can be broken down into five separate stages.
STAGE 1. - Initial Exploration.
Discovery Session and Mood Board.
In the beginning, I invite the client to fill in a design questionnaire that will give me the low-down on their brand and design needs. Then I create a mood board to confirm all the information I have received from the client and make sure that we are on the same page about look and feel.
The mood board is a very important and often overlooked part of the initial exploration as it gives the designer insights into the brand that could potentially turn into logo concepts.
STAGE 2. - Ideation.
Brainstorming & Rough Sketches.
After careful research, I create a quick mind-map to help me structure my thoughts. Mind mapping also helps me get better logo ideas by brainstorming and connecting seemingly unrelated ideas and objects.
Then I begin sketching rough ideas on paper. At this point I focus on coming up with as many rough ideas as possible to see which ones stick and are worth exploring.
STAGE 3. - Initial Concepts.
3-5 Initial Directions and Mockups.
The 3-5 best ideas get to be digitised and presented to the client in a neat PDF presentation.
STAGE 4. Refined Logo Concept.
Winning Direction Gets Polished to Perfection.
After the client has picked a winning direction, I spend some more time refining the concept. At this stage, I would grid the logo, experiment with fonts & colors and make sure that each and every pixel is in the right place.
STAGE 5. Brand Guide.
A Handbook Of Instructions & Applications.
Last but not least, I carefully put together a design guide with fonts, colors, do’s and don’ts and layout guidelines to make sure that the logo is used correctly. This style guide will later serve as the wireframe for building the whole visual language from website UX to stationery, merchandise and print.
Over these five stages, the brand identity and visual language is synthesised from a crude idea in the client’s imagination to a full-blown logo and branding.
The creative process is in place to make sure that client walks out not just with a logo but a visual identity tailored around their unique company and products and branding which speaks the customer’s language and captures his heart.
