Branding: Day 3 of #The100DayProject and Target 2030 :)
Today was day 3 of #the100DayProject to build a non-profit. I used it as an opportunity to bring some personality and colour to the project. Today I created or determined the following:
- Logo design (attached to this post, what do you think?)
- Basic colour palette
- Font families
Thoughts on the branding exercise:
A lot of environmental and/or non-profits go with the colours green and/or blue, and create natural looking logos like bears or waves.
I chose more alarming/serious colours and designed a logo that was simple, with an optimistic visual metaphor whereby we literally 'hit the target at the end of 2030'...think about it ;-)
Font choices are sometimes harder than the logo and colours in my experience. I went for big, bold headings using Montserrat, which I'll use for anything H1 to H6. It's a bit of an overused heading font to be honest, but given my time constraints it's best to commit and move on. For the body text I chose a separate, highly-readable font: Esteban - I've not used it before but I quite like it for now.
All in all I'm happy with the outcome. Branding is never straightforward and naturally things will evolve over time, but as a starting point I think it captures the spirit of where I want the project to go. It's kind of within my comfort zone being a designer, lots of more challenging and interesting things ahead!
As always, I'd really love to hear feedback if you have any! I'm having to make decisions so fast on everything that I don't have time engage with friends/family /colleagues much whilst I go along - it feels quite unnatural compared to my day job where there's lots of group decision making/consensus forming.
There are some more images on today's instagram post showing the font and colour variations etc:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv2CqlClHW2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Love the posts, I would be careful about doing the fun stuff (logos color) before the hard stuff (incorporating, calling donors etc)
But keep going! You got this.
thanks Josh :) I totally agree! I wasn't quite ready timing-wise to start the project but the hashtag / 100 day event thing on SM was starting April 2nd so I thought I better just jump on it and start with little bits.
I'm on holiday all next week and I'll be picking up the phone most days arranging appointments with solicitors, getting verbal agreements from my first/most immediate contacts for donations etc. When I ran the idea by a few people recently there was lots of enthusiasm but of course everyone wanted to see something more fleshed out so I'm trying to focus primarily on a.) legal stuff and b.) defining the central themes/causes and the pitch, at least for the first 21 days or so.
I also hit a bit of stumbling block the other day when I realised I need a new passport for some of the legal stuff (as I don't live in my home country) haha...it will take a few weeks to arrange that but I've fast tracked all the paperwork and I've got more than enough to keep me busy.
Funny how hard it is to do a little each day but I'm enjoying the challenge. I've been in meetings all day today at work and hardly had a moment and now I'm trying to find 30 minutes after putting my daughter to bed!
totally. Making progress each day is hard. But momentum is a powerful thing. A bit a day really does add up!