For the first project in J465 this Fall, students made logos and created a brand guide for a fictional publishing company of our choosing. I decided to name my company Ballerina Publishing because I used to be a dancer. I also wanted a company that was female focused and empowering.

For the overall logo, I originally had a silhouetted ballerina somewhat dancing across the word ballerina. However, after furthering my sketches, I decided it wouldn’t work because it was not very scalable. In my next sketch I tried to incorporate a tutu, that just did not look appropriate. Last I decided to try incorporating point shoes which seemed like the most obvious option from the beginning. Once I did the pointe shoes, the rest of my designs kind of just flowed. I decided on making the pointe shoes the “LL”s in Ballerina after that.

When I came to my brand colors, I wanted them to communicate a song feminine message. Usually, ballerinas wear a more pale, skin tone pink. I decided on hot pink because of the history behind that pink color being very exclusionary for people of color who danced ballet. The blue sends off a strong and grounded vibe whilst still being a cool compliment to the hot pink. I also decided to use the same font throughout all my designs. The fine I picked is traditional and sophisticated but still vey legible and kind of fun.

The different variations of the logo came about from my original sketches as well as some improvisation in adobe illustrator and the rules for the assignment. We had to make different variations like text only, graphic only, vertical and horizontal arrangements.

Overall, I really liked this project. As a small business owner this was actually pretty helpful learning how to create a brand guide. I loved that we were able to pull our own company name from our imagination because it gave us students so much creative freedom. This was a great assignment!