Working website

Evaluation of HMV re-brand project

Why I chose to re-brand HMV and where they went wrong:
HMV is a popular games, music and electronics retailer that has become progressively worse over the years, especially with their branding. Their logo went from bad to worse, losing the dog with a gramophone that gave them their name. Their logo is now just the plain pink text, HMV. This is part of their branding failure. Also, their website is dominated by the first banner, and then laid out in a way that is without any design and looks plain. When designing my logo and website for HMV, I decided to go completely against this, and have a more complicated logo and a site that makes sense and where all features are equal, rather than one taking over the whole website.

<- Before                                   After ->

What, why and how I did each stage of the project:
Ideas generation and sketching out designs:
I looked on the internet for inspiration of digital retailer re-brands and combined them with some of my own ideas on a mind map. I used other re-branding companies for examples of how they re-branded various companies. I started with rough ideas for the designs then put the ones I preferred in more detail.

Mock ups:
I made a template design for the lava lamp style, which had been voted as the best of my designs. I made it in four different colour schemes to see which ones worked best, as well as testing different sized bubbles. I liked the blue/green colour scheme and the fewer bubbles design so I combined them for the final logo.

Studio and location photography:
All photos are computer generated or sourced from HMV website.

Edit/photoshop process of making poster:
Step-by-step of designs can be found further down on the blog.

All strengths and weaknesses of the project:
Ideas generation and creativity:
I liked my selection of ideas. I had quite a lot of designs that are only slightly related to the HMV logo. I could have created a few more logos that were not as complicated so that the final design might have worked out better.

Appropriate to target audience and company:
I think the design is good for the target audience as it has a good colour scheme but it could be better related to new technology such as touch screens, consoles and computers rather than a lava lamp.

Mock up:
The mock went well. It helped me choose the correct colour scheme and design and was easy to transfer onto the computer for my final design, but it would have helped if I had made another mock up with the combination of colour scheme and design.

Photographs:
None taken.

Photoshop process of making final designs:
The photoshop process was quite easy. I copied the design through and then photoshopped it together. The logo took a bit of experimenting to get the lava lamp design which could have worked better if I had found tutorials on lava lamp effects online, but unfortunately I found none. The website was easier to create but started off looking too bright, so I changed the colour scheme so that the site is easier to look at, and is more attractive than blinding.

Designs used practically:

This design worked well, but the website was square rather than widescreen so I had to stretch it slightly to fit onto the monitor.


Overall:

The designs are suitable for the target audience of teenagers to middle-aged people. It is good for the whole range of people that HMV is aimed at because of the subtle colour scheme and lava lamp theme.
The designs match the brief well. It is aimed at the right audience and contains a high quality logo and new website design.
It is an interesting and creative design and is hooking to the buyer.
There were no technical issues affecting the final project.
The designs show that HMV is a upbeat company that is good for all ages, though primarily teenagers.

HMV final website design

Final HMV rebranded logo & step-by-step

I started by putting the largest of my paper designs onto photoshop so that I had a good template for the text. I went over the outline with a black brush. I the put a dark blue border on the logo, then a light blue background on the letter. I went back to the layer with the picture and used the quick selection tool to take the bubbles through. I went over the outlines of the bubbles with dark green, then used light green for the centre. I used the blur tool to make the design have a good gradient and not look very obviously photoshoped. I went to the background layer and put a dark border around the bubbles and blurred it again. Finally, I used the burn tool on the whole letter to make it a more realistic lava lamp colour. I repeated this on the other two letters to get my final HMV rebranded logo.

Variations of main idea

 My first design was greyscale (black and white). I liked the tone of this design but the lack of colour would not attract a very big audience. It would attract people who liked older logo designs before they were made in colour.

My second design is orange, yellow and red. The fiery colours would attract a teenage audience but might make other customers not want to go to HMV anymore. Because it would attract a certain audience but repel others, I decided not to use this design.

My third design was green. The green could be related to a calming mood or the Xbox company. This would attract a lot of younger people which matches the HMV target audience however green can also be associated with sickness if in a large quantity, which the design is. I have also chosen not to use this design.

My fourth design was blue with  green bubbles. Both green and blue are calming colours and because the green is in a small amount, it would not be associated with sickness. Both of the colours are used by major games console companies such as Xbox and PlayStation an would therefore be good for a games retail company. This is the design I will use as it attracts a much wider target audience, would not repel anyone and it links in with the major console companies that are around at the moment.

Ideas mind map & base design

Above - mind map of ideas

The base design for my remade HMV logo is a wavy lettering of HMV. From my mind map, I took the lava lamp style design and made it in a wavy text pattern, as an improvement suggested by friends. The text ended up covering 2 pages, so it will be a long rectangular logo rather than a square one. My inspiration for the lava lamp design was a HMV rebrand that used neon lights to create the letters. I used this to come up with making the letters out of something else and saw another rebrand where there were lava lamps in the background. I combined the ideas to get what I now have.

Company i'm re-branding

I have chosen to re-brand HMV as the logo is too simple an does not tell you anything about the company itself. HMV sells a lot of electrical items, from headphones to speakers, games to consoles. Their target audience is mainly gamers, but can reach to musicians, music lovers or people who like to play the odd game with their family. They do not currently have any advertising, but they could put adverts on TV, radio, the internet, in-game, or on billboards.

Re-branded companies

 The old logo is on the right. It is a very simple logo but it is hard to read and does not give any information about the company. This impacts the company as it does not specify what the company is about making it hard to attract any target audience.

The re-made logo is much better because it links to a teenage target audience with the graffiti style design. The name is much easier to read and the logo tells the viewer that blast is a music/creative company. It uses a bright and simple colour scheme as a hooking element.

Firedog is the company that re-branded Blast. Firedog is a team of creative people who make logos and other graphics designs for companies.

Failing Brands Mindmap

Evaluation of final poster.

Evaluation Part 1:Explain exactly what, why and how you did each stage of the process?

Ideas generation:
To start with, I came up with a lot of ideas based on famous or extreme locations such as the moon, the seabed and the Eiffel Tower. I thought about using internet sourced images but was not allowed so I created the places with plasticine and tissue paper. To narrow down my ideas I thought about which parts kept repeating, such as the space theme, and which parts would not work out well, such as many locations in one image.

Sketching out design layouts:
I started by drawing the background for the designs then I added the shoes and finally other aesthetics. I changed a  few things about the designs as I went through and then decided on my favourite design and put some small improvements on it, including more detail and a slogan.

Mock up:
We used photoshop to mock up our final design with internet sourced images and made a screen recording of the making of it. It was to practise our manipulation/composite skills.

Studio and location photography:
For my final design I made a moon out of plasticine and a sea like scene from tissue paper. I put them on a white background with studio lights on them to prevent shadow and make the object/scene more visible.

Edit:
I removed the white background from the moon picture with the magic wand tool so that I could replace it with a black background when it went through photoshop during the making of my final design.

Photoshop process of making the final poster (video):
--> Video link <--


Putting into real life setting:

I put my poster onto a western wanted poster wall. I put my poster into photoshop and used free transform to rotate the image and resized it to match the original poster size from the wall. I also got some nails of the internet and used them to "hold the poster up" in the picture.

Evaluation Part 2:Last all the strengths and weaknesses of each aspect of the production.

Idea generation and creativity:
I came up with many designs but they stuck to three similar themes - space, the sea and famous foreign locations. I did not colour in most of the original designs as I was short on time. Instead I only coloured in the ones that I liked the most.

Appropriate to target audience and company:
 It suits the target audience well as it appeals to the adventurous side in teenagers. Unfortunately it does not relate to Vans or the Vans slogan in any way.

Mock up:
The mock up worked well. The picture is easy to understand and the gradients worked well. It is a bit too cartoonish to be used as the actual poster and it uses internet sourced images which is not allowed for the final design.

Photographs of the trainers, props and locations:
The trainer photos worked very well and it was easy to remove the background of them. The moon photo was the same but the actual prop could have been more realistic. The sea picture turned half of the sea into a brown colour which did not go well, but the blues and greens at the bottom of the photo showed up well.

Editing my best images to use in the final design:
This entirely consisted of removing backgrounds from the images so was very easy and wired extremely well.

Photoshop process of making the final design:
The photoshop process went well but was slow due to recording the screen at the same time as working and some more time consuming techniques were used.

Evaluation Part 3: Evaluate the success of the final poster design, is your re advertising for a target audience…

Suitable for your target audience?
Yes as it has a more adventurous theme which will appeal to the teenage target audience.

Correctly responding to the brief?
The final design matches the brief's specifications and shows a good amount of my photoshop skills.

Interesting, creative and hooking to the buyer?
I think it is interesting and creative as it shows someone wearing the shoes and standing both on the moon and the seabed, 2 very hard to reach locations. This will hook the buyer as (even though photoshoped) it relates to the created slogan of "these will take you anywhere".

Quality of photography?
The photograph of the moon worked well, was high quality and turned out well in the final image. The photo of the sea could have worked better as it did not turn out well from the camera but looked ok in the final poster.

Technical issues?
There were no technical issues, although it would have been faster and easier if we had worked on better computers. We worked on macs with intel 1.83 GHz core 2 duo processors and 2.5GB of DDR2 RAM. It would have been better to have quad core 3GHz+ processor and at least 4GB of DDR3 RAM.

Clear and succinct poster and does it link to target audience?
The poster has a clear design, is easy to understand and links to the target audience of teenagers.

Convey a clear message?
It conveys the message that using these shoes will take you anywhere, also meaning they are durable, long term shoes that will last for all of your travels.