The Basics of Branding - Using Open Source Assets + Affinity Designer V1 to Design a Logo

Intrduction

Hello everyone welcome to my latest skillshare class. I’m Jen Lezan and I’ll be your teacher for this course. I’m a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and educator based out of the midwest and I run Bella + Sophia Creative studio. You may know me from my previous courses on skillshare or from my YouTube channel: The Creative Studio where I share behind the scenes of tuning my creative business as well as creative design and art tutorials. In addition to my creative work, I’ve been teaching as an adjunct professor in higher ed for nearly 10 years. I often teach marketing and design courses and I wanted to bring one of my favorite courses (The Fundamentals of Branding and Identity Design) to the digital space for small business owners who are looking to understand and establish their own brand identity. So, we are going to do just that in this class. Not only will you get a better understanding of branding and how it applies to business, but I will also offer insights on how I work on logo design with clients and how you can apply that process to designing your own logo and branding identity. You will also get to create your own logo in a simple and efficient way using open source assets from places like freepik.com or https://creativemarket.com. This class will be the first in a 2 part series dedicated to branding. Be on the look out for the next class: Elevating Your Brand with Packaging Design for Your Etsy Shop. 

What you will learn

In this course, we are going to go over the Basics of branding, understanding what a brand identity is and why it is important for your creative small business or etsy shop and we will be designing a simple logo for your brand. Logos are a vital part of branding your business that will help to create recognition for your company within the market. 

Logos bombard us daily. Think about clothing labels, tvs, computers, even your toothpaste. From the moment we get up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we are surrounded by subliminal advertising and logos. A stat from the Book: Brain Longevity, that I share with my marketing students at the university that always blows their minds is that the average american sees 16,000+ advertisements, logos and labels in ONE DAY. 

Reuters proclaimed in the 90s that mankind has produced more information in the last 30 year than in the previous 5000. Mind you, that was over 20 years ago and with the advent and growth of social media, I am sure that number has increased EXPONENTIALLY. 

With that being said, since we are producing so much more information than in the past, we are seeing branding and logos that are increasingly similar to one another. This poses a problem for companies that retrying to differentiate themselves visually, but it also creates a fun opportunity for designers and other creatives to create iconic identities. With the advent of sites like Creative Market, it also offers businesses the opportunity to design branding in a budget friendly or DIY kind of way. Personally, as a freelance designer I don’t think these sites are putting designers out of business, they’re disrupting the industry and making us rethink our business models.

Of course, as creative business people or small business owners who might just be starting out or don’t have the traditional design chops,  you may want to be able to brand yourselves in a way that makes sense to you.  So, I want go over an easy way to design a logo using pre-made open source assets from places like freepik.com or creative market and dafont.com  and apply them to a logo and then utilize that logo on a business card.

Who this class is catered to: 

This class is catered to the beginner designers or small business owners who are looking to create a logo on their own or rebrand in a simple and efficient way, as I will walk you through the steps of affinity designer while utilizing pre-made open source assets. Some knowledge in Affinity Designer will be helpful, but I’ll be sure to walk you through the basics of understanding the tools we will be working to create your logo.  

Music Credit: 

Copyright Chillhop Music - https://chll.to/754b62bb

Stock Video Credit:

http://www.pexels.com