Esprit Visual Development Guide

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VISUAL ANALYSIS The Old Logo

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Concept Research

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New Concepts

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IDENTITY CREATION Logo Sketches

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Digital Roughs

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Similar Logos

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Logo Refinements

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Final Logo

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THE OLD LOGO

Abstract + Sense of Fun In 1979, John Casado designed the memorable Esprit stencil-effect logo. He was a rising star in the California design scene who began as his graphic design career working under Saul Bass. Starting with basic Helvetica, the letters were traced and redrawn. Despite John’s worries that the triple-bar “E” would not be legible, the logo became one of the most instantly recognizable and memorable within the fashion industry. Even though Esprit stores are not longer in the US, many American fans can still recall the iconic stencil logo.

Our goal in developing a new logo is to still capture a feeling of friendliness, but to create a more symbolic logomark. The new logo will reference our mission of empowering young women to take a stand for environmental and social issues by being catalysts of change and more conscious consumers.

OLD LOGO Designed by John Casado in 1979.

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The new logo will symbolize our mission of empowering young women to stand up for environmental and social issues by being catalysts of change and conscious about the choices they make as consumers.

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CONCEPT RESEARCH

Unity

In today’s challenging world, women need to stick together. Esprit brings young women from different backgrounds together and celebrates diversity of thought and culture. We believe in the US our society is in desperate need of unifying, instead of becoming more divisive, judgemental, and hateful.

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CONCEPT RESEARCH

Empowerment

Esprit will empower women to get involved in fighting for women’s rights and environmental protections and to make conscious choices when buying things.

We can’t afford to be passive, we need to roll up our sleeves, get creative, and build a hopeful future.

By sharing ideas, resources, and inspirations with each other we can raise everyone up.

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CONCEPT RESEARCH

Environment

Esprit encourages environmental stewardship on all levels. We empower women to choose products that are better for the environment and to engage in activism, community service, and education initiatives that fight against environmental degradation.

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NEW CONCEPTS

Unity + Environment + Empowerment The logo development process began with researching and brainstorming. The logo development process started with our belief that our country, and world, can be a better place if women come together in unity and stand up for the rights of women and the protection of our environment. Based on this belief, three camps were identified around keywords and key phrases that fit with the Esprit mission and soul. The camps included unity, empowerment, and environment. This approach helped us to generate different ideas for a long solution that would be more symbolic of our brand mission.

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UNITY: GROUPS ARE STRONGER THAN INDIVIDUALS I nspirational Elements: hands clasped, overlapping shapes, connected shapes, connected type

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EMPOWERMENT: WOMEN CAN CREATE LASTING CHANGE Inspirational Elements: forward arrows, spark, dandelion, lightning, acorn, flock of birds

ENVIRONMENT: THINK ABOUT YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Inspirational Elements: leaves, earth, tree rings, acorn, ripples, mother nature, roots

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LOGO SKETCHES

Unity

The concept of unity fits with Esprit’s original mission to promote sticking together and the idea that groups are stronger than individuals and that we should be conscious of other people as we live our lives and move away from being such an individualistic society.

SKETCH NOTES The ideas of forward movement and

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overlapping shapes were explored to convey a sense of strength in a group.

Shapes that gave off a badge feel were also explored to convey the strength of a group, but ultimately this feel was too military and harsh for our friendly brand. It was decided that the other camps had more potential to represent the Esprit brand mission.

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LOGO SKETCHES

Empowerment

The idea around empowering women to create change stems from the fact that with the new political landscape in the US, the threats to women’s rights and to environmental protection are very real and serious.

Historically, some of Esprit’s best customer campaigns and employee initiatives featured feminist agendas.

Now is the time to go back to this early thinking and build on it.

SKETCH NOTES

R1

The ideas of arrows and forward movement were explored to represent empowerment. A dandelion concept was also explored because of the reference to being resilient in challenging situations. The dandelion was carried forward into more iterations.

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LOGO SKETCHES

Environment

The concept of the environment fits with Esprit’s original soul of promoting environmental consciousness through the vehicle of fashion. As we set out to not just capture our customers attention, but to get them to take action, having this environmental symbolism in our logo will be critical. As concepts in this camp were developed, it was key to remember not to go for overused motifs, like a planet or the recycling symbol, or overused colors, like grass greens.

SKETCH NOTES

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Various nature references were explored, but the idea of tree rings felt like it had potential because it could symbolize strength, the environment, and wisdom. These sketches also sparked the idea of trying out acorns as a reference to nature, strength, and new growth.

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LOGO SKETCHES

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Empowerment

SKETCH NOTES Various abstract dandelions were sketched to create a feeling of both momentum and strength.

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LOGO SKETCHES

Environment

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SKETCH NOTES More tree ring variations and acorns were sketched. In this round, the idea of placing an “e” in the center to reference Esprit was developed.

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DIGITAL ROUGHS

Empowerment

When computer roughs were developed, the concept of unity no longer became a key focus. Instead, the concepts around empowerment and the environment were explored because these areas felt more unique to the Esprit brand and more pivotal to communicate through the logo. For the idea of empowerment, we went ahead with the main idea of a resilient dandelion.

We also explored a secondary idea of an acorn to represent new beginnings and strength.

LOGO NOTES

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In this exploration, the idea of an acorn was eliminated because it didn’t feel contemporary enough for Esprit brand.

Exploring different sans serif typefaces helped in the discovery that a lowercase wordmark featuring a geometric sans serif would have the right kind of friendly feeling.

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esprit

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DIGITAL ROUGHS

Environment

For the idea of the environment, a few different visuals were explored in the first round. The main focus was to explore different tree ring variations, but tree roots and leaves were also explored. The tree rings and roots reference strength and wisdom. The tree leaves reference growth and a sense of hopefulness.

R1

LOGO NOTES In this exploration, the tree ring concept became the strongest because it offered the chance to integrate the “e� in the symbol. The roots and leaves concepts were not carried forward since they felt less visually impactful.

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DIGITAL ROUGHS

Empowerment

In this round, various takes on a dandelion were explored. The goal was to create a dandelion that felt modern and captured a sense of movement. A pop of color was also explored.

LOGO NOTES In this exploration, both angular and

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round approaches with the dandelions were explored. Different sans serifs were also explored. Ultimately, many of these dandelions felt a little too snowflake-like. The weight of the thinner sans serif was starting to feel right, so additional typefaces with similar weight were explored.

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esprit

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DIGITAL ROUGHS

Environment

In this round, tree rings were explored that gave more of a spotlight to the Esprit “e”. Various line styles and weights were explored. The development of a custom stencil typeface to pay tribute to the original Esprit typeface was also started. More touches of color were also trialed.

R2

LOGO NOTES In this exploration it was decided tree rings with line breaks paired better with the stenciled logo. The wordmark with the “e” disconnected in the middle was eliminated because it felt distracting.

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SIMILAR LOGOS

Companies with Tree Rings or Dandelions as Logos Before finalizing the logo direction for Esprit, research was done to look for similar logos in the marketplace.

It is important to do this kind of visual analysis to make sure that our new logo stands out and doesn’t get confused for another organization’s logo. Various tree ring and dandelion logos exist, but their color schemes and styles are quite a bit different from the direction the new Esprit logo is going. This was reassuring and now it was time to hone in on the final logo.

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REFINEMENTS

Empowerment

In this round, one last set of dandelion logos were developed. The idea was to create more movement with the petals “blowing� into the wind. The new custom stenciled typeface was also paired with the dandelion motif in this round.

LOGO NOTES In this exploration, the dandelion was-

R3

given more forward movement. The customized typeface, both stencil and non stencil versions were also applied.

Ultimately, it was decided that the environmental direction featuring tree rings captured a better feeling for Esprit and also offered a more unique look.

Flowers are a more common look with brands that are in the fashion space and target women.

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REFINEMENTS

Environment

In this round, a breakthrough was made in terms of sizing. After rounds of having the logo symbol scaled down, it was decided that the logo would have more impact if the symbol would be scaled to be the same width as the wordmark. Letters in the custom stencil typeface were further refined in this round. Enlarging the “e” at the center of the tree rings and reducing one tree ring to simplify the design were both explored.

R3

LOGO NOTES In this exploration it was decided that the symbol looked much improved when scaled up to be the same width as the wordmark, as did the “e” at the center of the symbol when it was enlarged. Finally, the symbol was simplified by reducing one tree ring. The logo was almost final, minus one last adjustment to the line thickness of the tree rings.

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FINAL LOGO

Symbolic + Friendly

The final logo captures a strong, yet friendly feeling and better communicates our mission of empowering young women to take a stand for environmental and social issues by being catalysts of change and more conscious consumers. When women see this symbol, we hope they will immediately feel the tie to nature and the tie to strength. Our logo intrigues, inspires, and welcomes our audience of young, hopeful women.

We chose to keep our logo in a simple one color format so it will integrate well with our vibrant color palette, patterns, and imagery.

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FINAL LOGO

Anatomy 1X

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1.4 4X

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“Without dreaming we lose excitement of possibilities.

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

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—GLORIA STEINEM, FEMINIST & POLITICAL ACTIVIST

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COLOPHON

TYPEFACES Sofia Freight SOFTWARE Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator & InDesign PRINTER California Office Service, San Francisco DESIGNER Katherine Wallenta DESIGN CONSULTATION Hunter Wimmer Academy of Art University PHOTOGRAPHY The images in this book are used in accordance with the Creative Commons License. This book is a noncommercial work produced as a student project for educational purposes, and as such is considered a derivative work under the Fair Use Clause of the US Copyright Law.

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