GD 400 - Advanced Graphic Design Studio
Spring 2021
Collaborators: Brian Sekelsky, Jeff Wilkinson, Amanda Williams, Brogan Williams, Jacob Williams
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In this studio, a team of peers and I worked with clients who created the startup TerraFirma Software, based in Puerto Rico, to refresh and strengthen their brand identity in order for them to reach a wider audience. TerraFirma is a climate mitigation software company.
Refreshing the Brand
Typography
Upon initial meetings with TerraFirma clients, we gathered that their main goals were to update their logo and motifs to achieve a brand that called to modern young adults while maintaining a refined, professional, and overall knowledgeable rhetoric. Additionally, since a prime component of their software is that its variable maps are visually stunning, they strove to emphasize one of their core tenets: making maps sexy again.
In order to achieve a sleek, modern, tech-forward look while maintaining personality, we chose to brand TerraFirma using the typeface Degular. It is functionally rebellious, dynamic and impactful. Its organic and sharp forms lend the sans serif to use in a modern software company focused on environmental impact. Degular is digital-friendly, a must since its primary use is within a software program. Finally, the typeface has variation in font families, making it efficient for use without any other complementary typefaces. We chose the Display, Regular, and Text families to make Degular scalable within its use in TerraFirma’s brand.
As a team, we went through iterative brainstorming sessions and group critiques to generate a range of potential new logos, logotypes, and motifs for the brand. By our final proposal, we had a style guide including a flexible new logotype, typographic and grid rules, color specifications, and pattern and photo treatments. We also provided mockups for social media branding across different platforms, a company website including a software play test and a soon-launching store offering different package deals for TerraFirma’s various software purchase options. Finally, we included proposed branding applications in promoting TerraFirma, from billboards to company van decals to water bottles.
Applying the Brand
In our initial research for designing a visual language, we took typographic inspiration from Civil Rights Movement protest signs which featured capital sans serif type of varying widths. In order to recall this in our exhibition branding, I managed the design of title text styles in all asset creation. We chose the base typeface Trade Gothic Next, and I manually adjusted character widths on an individual basis, as creating only one alphabet of custom characters would not provide enough variation in achieving our desired style.
Refreshing the Brand
Typography
Upon initial meetings with TerraFirma clients, we gathered that their main goals were to update their logo and motifs to achieve a brand that called to modern young adults while maintaining a refined, professional, and overall knowledgeable rhetoric. Additionally, since a prime component of their software is that its variable maps are visually stunning, they strove to emphasize one of their core tenets: making maps sexy again.
In order to achieve a sleek, modern, tech-forward look while maintaining personality, we chose to brand TerraFirma using the typeface Degular. It is functionally rebellious, dynamic and impactful. Its organic and sharp forms lend the sans serif to use in a modern software company focused on environmental impact. Degular is digital-friendly, a must since its primary use is within a software program. Finally, the typeface has variation in font families, making it efficient for use without any other complementary typefaces. We chose the Display, Regular, and Text families to make Degular scalable within its use in TerraFirma’s brand.
Color
When we were making decisions on the brand’s color scheme, we decided to take inspiration from a few of Puerto Rico’s nature scenes to draw upon the fact that the software provided by the company centers around geographical data from the territory with the goal of mitigating climate change in Puerto Rico. We chose four main accent colors with rich saturations to emphasize life and modernity, as well as two neutrals, a dark and a light.
As a team, we went through iterative brainstorming sessions and group critiques to generate a range of potential new logos, logotypes, and motifs for the brand. By our final proposal, we had a style guide including a flexible new logotype, typographic and grid rules, color specifications, and pattern and photo treatments. We also provided mockups for social media branding across different platforms, a company website including a software play test and a soon-launching store offering different package deals for TerraFirma’s various software purchase options. Finally, we included proposed branding applications in promoting TerraFirma, from billboards to company van decals to water bottles.
Applying the Brand
Below are mockups of proposed brand applications based on the style guide we created. The physical collateral exemplifies the sleek modernity of TerraFirma's brand and pulls directly from the software's maps in order to starkly project the high quality of the service in promotional material—to make maps sexy again.
