📢Manifesto + Identity
Snootie Studio takes us through the importance of graphic identity for Distributed Design projects. Through a series of activities, you will explore colour and type and apply them to your own manifesto
🎯 Invitation
Take inspiration from the work of Snootie studio to develop your own graphic identity.
Start by looking at the three tabs below.
🍏🍎 Who are Snootie Studios?
Snootie Studios is a creative studio specialising in Graphic Design and Illustration. They work on projects across a broad range of disciplines, including online facilitation, branding, print and publication, motion design, packaging and merchandise. Snootie have been invited to share their knowledge to improve the desirability and messaging of distributed design projects.
In Distributed Design the way you communicate your project is as important as the product itself. Makers of our designs encounter them as instructions and recipes hosted and shared online.
We want consumers/ citizens to choose Distributed Designs over mass-produced products. A strong graphic identity for the designer and brand for the product is key to this desirability.
The purpose of this section of the toolkit is
To understand graphic identity
To choose suitable fonts and colours
To apply them to a manifesto that conveys your personal position
You need to have completed Start with Why before this section
Read this section top to bottom first
Do the Type Suitability activity
Do the Colour Palette activity
Do the Manifesto activity
👀 Introduction
Similar to your personality, a graphic identity is what sets you apart from others in your field and makes you, uniquely you. Your identity is the result of a combination of graphic components that is made to convey a message and tone of voice to its intended audience.
Glossary
A symbol or icon that represents your brand. It does not actually need to bear any literal connection to brand name, but does need to spearhead the visual identity. Circle or square format is best in the era of profile pictures and tab icons.
Case Study: Distributed Design
The Logomark for Distributed Design hides two easter eggs within its clean, and confident style. First, the curve and the outer box meet up to form a letter D as a nod to the name of the brand. Second, the logo is based off of the Golden Spiral, a logarithmic spiral based approximated by Fibonacci's Golden Ratio Φ. The golden ratio represents a universal rule that denotes the "ideal" in all forms of life and matter, which speaks to the values of Distributed Design.
✍️ Typography
“Words have meaning. Type has spirit. The combination is spectacular.”\ Paula Scher
You can use type psychology to inform your design choices. Different typefaces can evoke various emotional and psychological responses, and by having an awareness of this and being willing to test it, you to make the best possible type choice and give you control over how your design is seen and received by your audience.
An example would be if you're designing an invite for your child's 6th birthday party. Choosing a fun, whimsical typeface like Sue Ellen Francisco, will evoke the right emotional response you want — whilst an Blackletter style typeface like Lucida Blackletter will be harder for children to read and gives off a darker tone.
Type for distributed design
System Fonts
Or 'Web-safe' fonts are fonts likely to be present on a wide range of computer systems and used by Web content authors to increase the likelihood that content displays in their chosen font.
The designers Formafantasma designed their website using them to minimise energy consumption. By choosing system fonts for your brand, you can guarantee the shareability of your designs.
List here: https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/fonts.html
Formafantasma: https://formafantasma.com/
Exercise: Type Suitability
This exercise is to help give some clarity to the complex task of choosing a typeface. Using the Miro template below, move the red dots to the typeface you think is most suitable for the type of business.
Choose your Typeface
Using one or more of the resources below find a typeface that represents you as a practitioner, consider why you've chosen this typeface, understanding your design decisions can help further clarify your graphic identity. Also consider how easy it is to move across platforms (web, adobe, print etc.)
🎨 Colour
Colour Psychology
“If one says “Red” - the name of the colour - and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.” Josef Albers, Interaction of Colour (1963)
Just like typefaces, colours can evoke various emotional and psychological responses. In branding, we try to select a colour palette that reflects the feelings we want our audience to experience when they interact with us. However, the same colour can mean vastly different things in the context of different brands.
An example would be if you're designing a logo for yourself, and your work focuses on the circular economy and technology. You may want to choose something green, which emits a natural, organic feel, or something like a dark blue, which emits a smart, technology focussed feel.
Exercise: Colour Palette
This exercise is to help you pick a suitable colour palette for yourself. Using the Miro template below, use the resources to choose a colour pallet to suit your graphic language.
📣 Making Your Manifesto
Creating a manifesto is a great way to not only express your approach as a designer, but to establish your graphic identity and explore the relationship between the two.
Using the copy you've already developed in the Start with Why exercise, as well as the typefaces and colour scheme you picked earlier, compile them all together to make your very own manifesto. You can see a Pinterest board of Manifesto examples for inspiration further down this page.
What do you care about?
Sit in pairs, one person talks and the other listens. Two mins share and then other reflects.
What is your personal mission - what were you born to do?
When did you last feel truly alive?
What would you do to make the world a better place if you knew you couldn’t fail?( Get specific - not end world hunger but launch a chain of free pizza restaurants.)
📓 Snootie's Resources
Don't Get a Job, Make a Job by Gem Barton: chats about people who bend the rules of the ‘traditional’ way of working in design.
Creativity is not a Competition: An article by an old classmate of mine about remembering why you want to be a designer and putting your rivalries aside.
Typography: A Very Short Introduction: If you’re terrified of typography (like I was), this breaks it down pretty well. Six Thinking Hats: A way to get around problems in an interesting way.
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