Tag: collateral material

Can you Create Collateral?

On September 19, 2023

Creating brand materials allows branding and exposure to be a daily part of operations in your company. Simple things like a company-branded envelope, letterhead, and business card make it easier to effortlessly promote your brand through natural interactions between you and your public!

What Is Collateral Material?

Brand or collateral materials are creative assets associated with your brand. Many of these brand materials will showcase your brand’s logo. These can include brochures, envelopes, letterheads, business cards, flyers, etc.

Jumping Off the Deep End

As mentioned in my previous post, finding inspiration and narrowing down the vibe for your organization is a vital part of creating collateral material for your business and should be your first stop when starting your design process.

Understanding your brand’s tone or mood allows you to translate it to your audience. This may seem easy at first. However, translating it to correspond with fonts, colors, and other design elements isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. Find fonts and color palettes that convey the key message that you want your audience to gather from your design.

I suggest utilizing mood boards and finding inspiration on platforms like Pinterest, and I Heart It. These platforms allow you to visualize the design by putting all of your essential elements in one area.

*Justinmind, 2020: “Inspiring mood board examples.”*

When creating the brand materials, I knew I wanted to go for a chic and simplistic vibe to my work. I wanted to represent Mejuri’s classic tone and showcase their contemporary take on familiar favorites. I thought utilizing colors and elements I saw repetitively in my inspiration boards and translating those into my design process would help me articulate these tones into my design.

Here are a few other pointers and guidelines I used to create brand materials!

Are We in Uniform?

Having uniformity in brand messaging across all channels, including collateral material, is essential for brand recognition. Ensuring your design will translate well across a business card, letterhead, and envelope is necessary when creating brand collateral material. Seeing a brand’s logo repetitively allows for faster brand recognition and a sense of cohesiveness.

Cohesive Designs

Having harmony within your design allows for the product to be aesthetically pleasing and easy on the viewer’s eyes. The goal is to stay consistent with all the content you implement into your brand.

Another example that is a factor of a cohesive design is the integration of the idea of scale and proportion. I’ve discussed these in depth in previous posts. However, to recall, scale and proportion are essential to design because different sizes can draw attention to specific elements. For example, having a design where the scaling of elements draws your eye around the whole page can display your message more effectively to your reader.

*SweeneyCreations.com, “Benefits of Cohesive Branding”*

Consistency in your Logos and Design

I decided that presenting the logo consistently throughout my messaging was essential for my design. I made the logo the biggest part of the design to draw the viewer’s eyes there. I repeated this logo throughout to once again improve brand recognition.

Consistency is all about showing up day in and day out with the same message, the same visuals, and the same tone of voice. It’s about being reliable and trustworthy, and showing your audience that you mean business.
BrennanBrand.com

Mejuri Branded Collateral Material

For my business card, letterhead, and envelope, I wanted to display a sense of elegance, simplicity and the idea of being a new version of the classic jewelry brands!

I achieved this by creating a simple logo and layout but still using concepts like the scale to draw the viewer’s eyes to the essential information: the logo, the company name, the company mission and Mejuris contact information.

I chose classic colors for my business card, letterhead and envelope: black, brown and white. This is due to Mejuri’s consistent element in their brand of neutrals being the primary colorway. As a brand, I wanted to showcase that Mejuri still provides comfort and reliability as classic brands. However, the blank spacing and boldness of the logo add a contemporary feel to the collateral materials.

Mejuri and the Magic of Messaging

By Zoe Taylor

On September 6, 2023

In PR Design, Public Relations

Mejuri, a Canadian-based fine jewelry brand, is based on its mission:

The brand’s focus on simplistic, sustainable and timeless pieces is a crucial difference from its competitors. Mejuri understands that fine jewelry is an investment, and they opt to create designs that will always be trendy.

Based on their classic appearance, they also highlight the youthfulness of their pieces by promoting dainty, gold and delicate looks.

While I create a new campaign for Mejuri, come along with me as I show you how I narrowed down my choice of language, images and overall vibe for this project.

Utilzing Visual Langauge

One thing that first caught my eye with the brand is the usage of precise language that focuses on their drive to contribute to sustainability. The brand has a very empowering undertone without the fluff of overly positive messaging.

For example, this is their Pintrest account. The phrase “Fine jewelry for being your damn self” showcases the brand’s philosophy of changing the behavior around fine jewelry and creating an equitable environment for all consumers.

I want to continue this element of authenticity, short and precise language. I think another element of Mejuri is that they let the products speak for themselves by having these short captions, which I want to incorporate into this new campaign.

For the messaging, I want to implement their font that is very bold but not detailed:

This font also supports the idea that the brand doesn’t need the extra fluff, and the central concept is simplicity.

Choosing Images for Visuals

Mejuris most recent campaign, I feel, fits the brand the best. Their recent campaign gave an editorial style and implemented it with a clean, high-contrast look. I plan to incorporate this element.

I want to present my visuals as more image-based to further the idea that Mejuri products speak for themselves and don’t need a long explanation.

In my inspiration board for the images for the campaign, I focused mainly on highlighting their products rather than just being an element of the picture. Some examples of this are:

Connecting Typography & Imagery

For this campaign, I want to utilize these high-contrast images with a focus on the jewelry to allow Mejuris’ core values and ideologies to be expressed. I plan to use a straightforward font with an image that is the main focal point of the visual. I want to make up for the lack of words with how I position my few words. I think wrapping the words around some aspects of the images would be a great way to make this simplistic editorial campaign look a bit more creative and intriguing.

The goal is to highlight the quality, simplicity and luxurious feel of Mejuri products. Making these visuals too busy would take away from that key message.

The Goal, Inspiration, and Vibe of Mejuri’s New Campaign

MEJURI

We are on a mission to redefine luxury.

As I’ve touched on several times, the elements presented before all contribute to enhancing the core ideas of Mejuri. Overall, we want to return to that mission: “We are on a mission to redefine luxury.”

Mejuris products are pieces of fine jewelry for everyday use. So, for my inspiration, I drew from a set of images that I feel represent all stages of life but still have a trendy, editorial and simple appeal.

We want to highlight visual elements: clean lines and textures, high contrast, negative spaces and pops of color.

To see more inspiration I drew for this campaign, visit my Pinterest board for this project!