[student project] visual development guide revlon (gr604)

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

REVLON

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

REVLON

INTRODUCTION

This visual development guide explores the visual identity of the rebranded Revlon; it summarizes the identity development process from the initial ideas to the final form. The identity is meant to enhance the soul and core ideas of the new brand; it’s meant to be the confident expression of diverse beauty.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

LOGO RESEARCH 06 08 10 12

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

The brand history Mission statement The old wordmark Three keywords

CHAPTER TWO

LOGO SKETCHES 16 34 42

2.1 Initial logo sketches 2.2 Detail refinements 2.3 Digital sketches

CHAPTER THREE

FINAL LOGO 50 54 56 58

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Chosen direction Final logo Inspiration Look-alike logos

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

CHAPTER ONE

LOGO RESEARCH

Revlon logo design starts with three keywords based on the soul of this brand, which is to enhance women’s beauty, express their diversity and add color to their lives. From divergent ideas, the best keyword and visual ideas for the Revlon logo came out.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

1.1 THE BRAND HISTORY

DESCRIPTION (1932 – PRESENT) Revlon is an American multinational cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company.

Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, and based in New York City by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the “L” in the Revlon name. Starting with a single product—a new type of nail enamel—the three founders pooled their resources and developed a unique manufacturing process.

Using pigments instead of dyes, we developed a variety of new shades of opaque nail enamel.

During World War II, we created makeup and related products for the U.S. Army, which was honored in 1944 with the Army-Navy “E” Award for Excellence. By the end of the war, Revlon was listed as one of America’s top five cosmetic houses.

Known throughout the world for our advertisements featuring glamorous models, Revlon was once considered around the world to be a top brand at the height of fashion. We were also the first cosmetics company to feature an African American model in our ads, and were well known for featuring models with a wide range of ages.

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REBRANDING OBJECTIVE Revlon not only offers cosmetic products, but also helps women find themselves and get jobs. There is also an organization for them to learn how to be confident, and the organization can help them solve their problems. Women of diverse cultures and backgrounds can work together to reach their goals.

There is great potential for increased focus on women with diverse backgrounds to enhance their inner beauty, and on training to develop their minds, and moreover, to promote diversity and add color to their lives.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

1.2 MISSION STATEMENT

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To help women add color to their lives, and enhance their inner and outer beauty to express their individuality and diversity.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

1.3 THE OLD WORDMARK

The old wordmark has been just the name of Revlon, and the “L” underlines the letter “o”. That is because the founders Charles Revson and his brother Joseph worked along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the “L” in the Revlon name. Also, they only use one color to show the logo.

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VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

1.4 THREE KEYWORDS

CONCEPTUAL RESEARCH The mission is to help women add color to their lives, and enhance their inner and outer beauty to express their individuality and diversity. The target audience is women from 16 to 60 years old. The concept here is to engage the soul and the target audience. As such, there are three keywords used to explore, design, and guides the visual development of the brand.

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CONFIDENT

Express their inner and outer beauty.

DIVERSE

Everyone embraces beauty in their own way.

ADVENTUROUS

Confident expression of diverse beauty.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

CHAPTER TWO

LOGO SKETCHES

The initial logo sketches are separated into three parts based on the three keywords, confident, diverse and adventurous.

The main idea is to convey express inner and outer beauty, everyone embraces beauty in their own way, confident expression of diverse beauty.

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VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

2.1 INITIAL LOGO SKETCHES

CONFIDENT

Express their inner and outer beauty.

The first set of sketches was grouped under “Express inner and outer beauty”. As a starting point, I used the outline of women with books symbolic marks.

I used the outline of women with books and some flowers as graphic marks.

I used different typefaces to create the meaning of confidentiality with wordmarks.

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I was thinking about how to express women’s elegance, so I used curved lines and soft shapes like women’s hair.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

I was thinking about how to express inner and outer beauty at the same time, so I tried different ways to show this idea.

Here is a separated flower to show inner and outer beauty.

This is a simple way to express beauty.

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I tried to use two shapes getting together to be perfect, and standing for inner and outer beauty as well.

Everyone is beautiful, not only flowers, but also grass and leaves.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

On this page, the logos that I circled are incorrect because I cannot separate words in these ways. That’s a weird solution to do.

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I cannot use a symbol in the logo.

These two circles remind people of the “Target� logo.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

DIVERSE

Everyone embraces beauty in their own way.

The first set of sketches was grouped under “Everyone embraces beauty in their own way�. As a starting point, I used some flowers and leaves as symbolic marks.

I used some flowers and different geometric shapes to show diversity by graphic marks.

I used different typefaces with geometric shapes to show diversity with wordmarks.

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On this page, some circled explorations that I pulled out are good ways to show the diverse beauty for Revlon.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

Everyone is unique, so I drew different flowers to stand for different people. However, I think this logo is a little busy and complex.

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I was thinking that everyone is different, and everyone is beautiful. Also, everyone likes a star in the universe and they are all different and unique. They represent themselves.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

I was thinking about hair with women, so I used curvy lines on letter shapes.

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Here is an interesting way to combine the letter “r� with flowers. It could work after refinements.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

I was trying to use leaf shapes combined with the wordmark Revlon.

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ADVENTUROUS

Confident expression of diverse beauty.

The first set of sketches was grouped under “Confident expression of diverse beauty�. As a starting point, I used different geometric shapes to show women exploring their beauty with symbolic marks.

I used the type that could be graphic shapes to show logos as graphic marks.

I used different typefaces to convey the idea of women exploring their beauty with wordmarks.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

These are two shapes of flowers, one is the outline of a flower and another is the stamen.

The idea is to represent inner and outer beauty. Also, it shows different angles to look at beauty.

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The idea is to use from a small size of letter to a big size of letter. That shows women are more and more powerful.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

Using the outline of products to show the new Revlon’s logo is not a good idea.

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I was trying to use petals of flowers to create a wordmark, but it doesn’t work well.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

2.2 DETAIL REFINEMENTS

The second set of sketches were grouped under “Confident expression of diverse beauty”. I focused on different flowers with the lower case letter “r” to represent the diverse beauty.

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This is a unique way to combine the letter “r“ with flowers, and I was trying to use different petal shapes to show ideas of diverse beauty.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

The petals of this flower overlay together showing another flower inside, and the inside flower is also a stamen.

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I was trying to show how to be diverse when drawing this logo.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

After some feedbacks, I was thinking using lower case “r” is a good solution to show the ideas of diverse beauty, so I explored more.

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It could work if I used curved lines around the letter.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

It could work, if I combined the letter “r“ with a dot on the right.

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The letter looks like number one instead of the letter “r“.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

2.3 DIGITAL SKETCHES

The digital sketches are based on the concept of confident expression of diverse beauty. I focused on different flowers, and I also tried to use flowers with the lower case letter “r” to represent diverse beauty.

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I tried to get some ideas from these two digital refined logos, and thought about diverse beauty.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

I was trying to make connections between the lower case letter “r” and circles on the “r”, but it is hard to have a good connection.

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I tried to use other ways to show my ideas of confident expression of diverse beauty, but some of them do not feel good at all.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

I was still trying to find a solution to combine the letter “r” with the stamen of the flower, but it still looks not good enough.

REV LON

REVLO N

RE VLO N

Rev l o n

Revlon

Rev lon

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I looked back to find how making the logo more powerful and get people’s attention. I thought differently in the end, I just used big flowers to hide the letter “r� inside their petals.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

CHAPTER THREE

FINAL LOGO

Through refinements, I finally got a direction to make a logo more attractive and obvious. The idea also the same as before, to convey a confident expression of diverse beauty.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

3.1 CHOSEN DIRECTION

These are two directions, the first row is four petals in a circle with a lower case letter “r“ inside. The second row shows the feeling of burst into bloom of flowers. Both of them, I used different colors for petals to represent a confident expression of diverse beauty.

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Revlon

REV LO N

REVLON

REVLON

REVLON

REVLON

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

In the end, I refined some little details about this logo. I made the circle bigger to contain four petals inside, and cut off the shape of lower case letter “r“ on the first petals to make it fit on the petals, and looks like in a circle. Also, I tried different colors to stand for diversity.

REVLON

REVLON

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REVLON

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REVLON

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After I tried different colors, and I found just using two colors on four petals is a best solution. Moreover, the best main color is orange, so I explored some colors on the bottom including the color of wordmarks.

REVLON

REVLON

REVLON

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

3.2 FINAL LOGO

I used four flower petals to show diverse beauty, and I used two colors to separate four petals. I added Revlon’s initial “R” as a lower case “r“ to this logo.

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REVLON

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

3.3 INSPIRATION

Since many companies use flowers and petals to represent beauty products, I was also considering using petals to stand for diverse beauty. In addition, I designed the lower case letter “r� like a circular drop, a water drop and a perfect circle, which means everyone is like a perfect circle, and they are beautiful and confident. They can guide themselves by learning how to express their diverse beauty, so I used circles to structure this logo.

I also got some inspiration from the logo of Mennonite Church USA because they use circles, too. Moreover, the overall feeling of the logo is soft, friendly, peaceful and fairness.

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VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

3.4 LOOK-ALIKE LOGOS

INNER AND OUTER BEAUTY The following brands have a similar logo design to Revlon. Most salons, nail and skin care companies use flowers to represent outer beauty for women. Our idea is the same, using the flower to show the beauty of women. However, the shapes and concept are different from our logo.

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VISUAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

DIVERSE The following brands have a similar logo design to Revlon.

Most companies use colors to represent diversity. The idea is the same as us by using different colors to show diversity.

However, I do not use more than three colors.

According to the soul of Revlon, I put the letter “r� onto four petal shape, and also used colors to separate each of petals to stand for diversity.

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SOURCES huffingtonpost.com usnews.com mintyfreshdigital.com consejos.garnier.es

COLOPHON

DESIGNER Liqi Rong TYPEFACE Bodoni Franklin Gothic SOFTWARE Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign PRINTER Blurb DESIGN CONSULTATION Hunter Wimmer Academy of Art University This bookis a non-commercial 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.