Live to Inspire.

This is getting really mind-draining. The brand image is final, but logo making is becoming a pain in the ass. What do you think of the logo on top? I literally don’t know what to do now, I’m not 100% for it but it seems alright.. and also it seems not. I need suggestions, inspirations and ideas. I don’t know if I should just separate the flag colors and the logo or make it as one. 

You may be asking why the hell am I giving myself a hard time in this part of brand making. It’s just a logo. In small and independent brands, since you don’t have enough budget it is necessary to perfect each detail of the business. And because you’re small, your capacity to attend to every detail of the brand is an advantage against bigger brands. These details are the factors that will make your consumers love your brand, and if you’re lucky enough, they may even become extremely loyal to you and your products.

So since I’m really in a block now in terms of the logo, let’s leave it for a while and go into another vital part of the brand, the look. As a part-fashion brand, it is necessary to have an original look or a certain main product. Let’s take Lacoste for example, do you go to Lacoste because you’re looking for pants? How about in Levi’s? Do you go in their store because you need a shirt? You may see those things in their shops but the fact is, you do not go to their shops because you need those stuff, you go there to look around. But when the need arises, you’ll know where to get them, what brand it is and what store. 

If you’re aiming to have a successful and famous fashion brand, you should have your own look, something to be different among other brands. A look that will stick to the consumers minds, and occupy that certain look with your brand. Think about American cowboy, what brand comes to mind? Levi’s? How about surfer? Billabong? Hurley? Preppy fashion guy? Topman maybe? The main point is, you want your brand to own a certain look. A look that will transcend your brand’s core characters to your consumers and as well as make it easier for them to remember your brand. 

However, there might be questions like, how about Zara or Bench? In my opinion, they are more of a retail fashion company. They have whatever is trendy and in. They house almost every look there is, in other words they are like a clothing department store. And besides, being a small fashion brand how can you beat a competitor with 100-300 stores? I guess not. 

So there, I’m now working on the look of The Weekends Club. If you don’t know yet, yes, The Weekends Club will be a part-fashion brand, part-lifestyle brand, for men. (sorry girls, I just can’t design clothes for you, I don’t know how. haha!) To give you a short preview of the look I want TWC to have, here’s a photo. 

By look I mean the clothes, alright? The Weekends Club members can be short haired and clean-cut. haha! More on the look/style on my next post. 

Separate yourself from the pack.

So it’s been a while since I wrote something about the brand, as you can see I changed my tumblr layout.. again. But now I am more sure, this is how The Weekends Club looks like. In this post, I will show you a run-through on how I came about this visual concept. 

First, remember my first logo? I admit, I really liked it that I disregarded and bent branding guidelines just to make that logo fit my brand concept. In return, ideas for the brand grew apart from the core brand identity. A perfect example of art and design overriding branding and marketing, which I think a lot of aspiring brand owners accidentally do, particularly, artists turned brand owners (but not all). Okay, the logo might not be that bad, but when I asked some friends on what they think about that logo (one thing you should do when creating something, opinions and comments of peers help a lot), their answers were not what I wanted to hear. It was too elegant and classy, channeling Mad Men (a friend said). Not at all what The Weekends Club stands for. So I asked myself again, what is The Weekends Club? 

After some time, I finally realized what The Weekends Club should be. It should be what I want it to be.. it should be who I am.. what I believe in.. what I live for. The best way (but not the only way..) for a brand (or a business) to be successful is for the owner to be the prime customer of it. He should love his brand, his products and what it stands for. He should embody the brand in every way possible, for the brand to transcend its message completely. And in the process, be more fulfilled than any other usual entrepreneur/business owner. 

The photo above showcases my first attempt to create the look for TWC’s true identity. As cheesy as this may sound, the flag meant something. The three bars represent the three nights (would’ve said three days but technically Friday is still counted as a weekday) of the weekend. The colors? Forget about them, I have explanations for them but since I’m not gonna use them anyway, lets leave them as just colors. So what do you think? After showing it to some friends, comments that struck me were, “it looks like the TV bars, it’s CYM (the basic colors) and it’s a flag in Europe” (which it is, actually before that version, yellow was at the middle instead of red, the exact flag color combination of Romania). After all those comments I realized a logo should not be perceived as something else. Consumers should see the logo and say it’s The Weekends Club, or if they don’t know the brand, when they see the logo they should ask “What’s that?” In this manner, you have a better chance of owning the image (the logo for your brand) rather than getting another image that can mean other things to your consumers. It’s harder to change people’s minds than to inform them of new things/ideas.

And so I thought of other possible color combinations, but still using the three bars. Going back to my previous post about logo-making, I specifically wrote that a logo should have a max of two colors only. (breaking another guideline again with the first version I made) If you noticed, one color that was constant in all combinations were yellow, this is due to a research I made way back in July. I asked around 20 people on what color comes to mind when they think of weekends, and yellow received the highest mention-rate. Now, how can you ignore a color backed-up by research? Then after some mind-boggling decision-making and concept-branding-logo-reasoning, I decided I’ll use the blue/yellow/blue combination. The burgundy/yellow/burgundy seems like Spain and then the yellow/blue/yellow is just too bright. If it was your decision, what would’ve been your choice? Or do you have any other color combinations in mind?

Now the colors were final, but there was still something wrong with it. In this photo you can see that I changed the font to a simpler one and I made the borders thinner. In my opinion it made the logo more refined. And so I thought this will be the final logo until…

…to be continued.

If you have noticed on my blog’s header, you’ll see above The Weekends Club, “Chapter 1: The Fruition” is written. Not to sound cheesy or romantic.. or just over-doing, I wrote that to clearly show everyone that the brand is still in this stage. Like a baby in a mother’s womb. Obviously not yet in reality, but is alive and kicking. And yes, I’m the mother.. but please stop imagining it, graphically wrong in any way imagined.

Back to Chapter 1, so if it is about the molding of the brand, its core and its entire character, what are the next chapters about? That, I’ve yet to answer, let’s first focus on what The Weekends Club is now. 

I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, what should this brand have for it to be different? What product will differentiate it from all the other clothing/fashion brands? I was looking at all this other brands and businesses, focused more on their products. Do I do shirts, jackets or a collection? A lot of questions indeed. But what I missed out and forgot about is the true essence of this brand. It is not a fashion brand or a clothing brand, it is.. a lifestyle brand. It won’t sell clothes (literally it will though), it will inspire, influence and impart experiences. 

I was asking a lot of wrong questions. True though that I need to have answers for all those questions, however, it is not the right questions for the creation of the brand and its entire character.

TWC might have same v-neck shirts with Topman, but what make will it better is the story behind it, the movement that only club members know of. The Weekends Club is not exclusive, it is open to everyone who wants to join. Club members may be very different from each other, but they have this one drive that makes them alike and sets them apart from the society. 

The Weekends Club embodies my personal life motto “Live to Inspire”. Everyone who will embrace the club is either inspired or inspires others. In correlation, it is called The Weekends Club because of one reason, the club also wants everyone to do what they want and are passionate about. If not all, most of us are stuck in boxes made by society’s norms.. and realities of life. The only time a lot of us are given the chance to really do what we want, are on weekends. Hobbies, leisure and passion careers.

This one I’m now sure of, the sole reason why I want my own brand is to build a community around the brand. Build friendships and connections. And the most important for me, to inspire all of them. There is more to life than a mere cubicle-ridden-work. Dive, paint, travel, eat, or own a brand, it’s all up to you.

You are invited to be part of the club, be inspired and inspire.