Hodgin HR Consulting
July - September 2024 | Branding Basics Package
Meet Emily - the powerhouse behind this female lead HR & Consulting small business.
She wants to be right by your side, providing common sense, logical solutions for your business and take care of the "fun stuff" that is....HR.
I met with Emily to go over her business goals, mission, preferences, visual interests, and her challenges. We put a plan together and I got started on the discovery and research phase of creating this brand that is going to represent her business in the best way possible.
Discovery Phase
I met with Emily initially to get an idea of what she does, who she serves, and what her challenges are in the industry. Here is what I put together in her Brand Strategy document:
Mission & Goals: To be a trusted partner to small business owners. Emily wants to set them up for success by providing logical solutions that will ease them of stress and help them focus on running their business.
Target Audience: Small business owners, age: 30-50yrs old. These small business owners have a lot to worry about. They have things that they don't even know they should be worrying about. That is where Emily comes in! She is here to help with the "fun" side of business ownership.
Competitors: Emily has a "community of competition" mindset, which is great. She focuses on networking with other professionals in her industry, and always finding ways to continue to help her clients. She is not trying to compete with large HR firms.
Preferences: Emily wants the visual identity of her brand to reflect calmness, partnership, and trust. She wants her brand to have a feminine feel and be playful while remaining professional. She does not have too many preferences on symbols, colors, or design styles. She mentioned that she wants to throw up at the color yellow. Maybe we don't use yellow in this brand. She loves cool colors.
Strategy: Let's get started researching the industry, and see what other professionals in the HR space are doing for their brands, marketing, websites, and with the tone of voice in their visual identity.
Research
Upon researching, I found a few things that stood out to me in the HR space.
Common Icons & Symbols: The industry "cliches" I noticed were the overuse of symbols, like folded hands, the silhouettes of two people, papers and pencils, hearts, and trees. Symbols are great and are important when designing a brand, but we want to create a brand that is unique to each client, with their own unique images, icons, logos, and more.
Colors: Many of the colors I see in the HR space are royal blues, greens, and gray. Much of the styles I see are very formal, sterile, and lack creativity and personality. Everything looks fairly templated, which we want to stay away from.
So, what I'm seeing is overly formal, sterile brands with not much personality. I think it will help Emily stand out in the industry with a fun, bright, feminine brand in the HR space. Her clients will see her brand and feel a sense of calmness, and know they can trust the awesome person behind the brand! But, where do we start to build all of this?
THE MOOD BOARD!
Mood Board & Logo Concepts
A mood board is visual inspiration for a brand. This can contain colors, shapes, symbols, typefaces, patterns, and images that reflect the brand.
To begin, I immediately had in my mind the color Teal. Emily mentioned she liked cooler colors, and two cool colors are green and blue. These are used a lot in the HR space I've found, through the research phase. Blue and green make sense here because both colors represent peacefulness, trust, calmness, opportunity, and partnership.
These are all perfect for Emily's brand, but how do we stand out against all of the other brands out there? What if we combined blue and green?
I started with teal & mint. Mint would include a feminine feel to the brand which is something Emily wanted. She also mentioned liking script fonts, which I found a few I thought would pair well with all of the other elements of this brand.
Logo Concepts
From the mood board, I explained my thoughts and the direction I was headed with Emily's logo.
1. Hodgin Logo - the top logo you see includes the full business name, along with an icon. I noticed when creating this logo concept, the letters "o, d, and g" together create three circles, to which I thought, "This kind of looks like a link icon, just with three segments instead of two." I liked the "link" symbol included in her logo because links are often used to symbolize togetherness, teamwork, and partnership - all things Emily wanted for her brand.
2. Emily Logo - the middle logo you see is more personal to Emily, as her name would be the logo. This option includes the script typeface she liked.
3. H Logo - this would be an icon logo. This logo is simple yet playful, with the "h" as the main letter, and the "c" underneath for "Consulting." It has rounded corners and lots of curves, giving the logo a soft, feminine feel Emily wanted.
Feedback: Emily immediately loved the Hodgin logo and Emily logo. She liked the H Logo, but preferred to see a logo with a word included, rather than an icon alone.
Final Logo
Emily liked the Hodgin logo and Emily logo, but was unsure of how to combine the two to create something that fit perfectly for her business. We talked about elements of each option and what she liked and disliked about both.
She mentioned really wanting a script font to be included in her logo and she really liked the link symbol in the first option.
She was unsure of using her first name in her logo and asked if we could take the Emily concept, and somehow bring in the name "Hodgin" instead.
I presented this logo concept a few days later. The link symbol just as she like it before, and instead of "Emily" we used the word "Hodgin" with "HR Consulting" beneath, balancing out the script typeface with a san serif which will give the logo contrast.
From here we implemented the color palette Emily loved, with a teal, midnight teal, and mint. All of these colors represent what she wanted her brand to be all about, partnership, trust, and calmness.
From here we put together sub logos and the brand guidelines document which tells Emily exactly how to use her logos, which colors represent her brand, the typography choices, and we discussed options for print materials in the future.
