Foils

Logo development

After the crit me and luke sat down all afternoon and came up with this beauty. looking at this logo now it really connotes the fresh idea of H.Samuel being a modern jeweller. We kept the same 'Optimum' typeface but we took the 'H.' off as this made the logo unbalanced and having this once work brand really makes it seem more relaxed and friendly. We are both really happy with it, and even Graham was pleased.
This is the final logo that we are going to use on the retail bad and propose for other promotional material.

Final Crit, Turning Point

Todays crit really made me and Luke realise what we had to. We had been to ambitious with what we had wanted to do, and were still struggling to get it all done. After seeing all out work, the group suggested that we take one aspect and produce this to a high quality instead of developing everything with a low quality. So we have decided to focus this last week on the retail bad as this contains most of the design aspects that we have designed, e.g. colour, patterns, tone of voice and print finishes. It was also suggested that we tweak our logo as even though Graham agreed that it said what we wanted it to, there was something not quite right about it. We needed to be more brave with it rather than just making subtle changes.

Patterns in the displays

Display Patterns

Luke has developed some patters using the Wacom tablet, using watches for the imagery at first and then looking into rings, earrings and other kinds of jewellery. These simple repeat patterns are what we are going to use within the display units and promotional material.

Display stands development

Ok, so after experimenting with the display stands, we still needed something for the windows. These boxes are developed from our original idea sheets and they are removable boxes that can be stacked, hung or just placed around the store and in the windows. They will contain the small display stands inside with the jewellery on show. each box has 3 sides that are transparent material so a full view of the product can be seen from however the boxes are arranged.
This is the first mock up we did to see how it would work and what size boxes were appropriate.

We went on to develop the mock ups to these mount board and acetate so that we got a better understanding of the materials. we also realised that we could have more than 3 sides transparent. this gives more flexibility for the displays and more over alll visibility of the product.

As well as experimenting with the logo we have started looking at the display stands, and trying to simplify them and make them a bit more individual to H.Samuel. We experimented with simple ring holders and chains slots and using the H.S as a way of displaying earrings.

We used perspex to produce some free standing displays with a similar format to the existing once that could be placed in the windows or cabinets. They have been kept clear so that some form of pattern/design can be slid behind it.

A more handmade approach

I tried the logo in a more handmade style, cutting it from paper

Handy Displays

Another idea that came up was displaying watched on a hand shape, so I have experimented with other jewellery and positions of the hand that could work with displaying the H.Samuel products. The idea of the hand creates a more contemporary, fun and individual identity for H.Samuel, so attracting the attention of a younger audience.

I tried 3 styles of hands to compare and see which would fit best for our re brand designs.

I really like the style of the hand drawn hand, which I took inspiration from Saul Bass and Tanishq Jewellery advertising. But after experimenting with this, I realised that it didnt fit with the look of H.Samuel and so we decided to go with the middle hand.

We laser cut the hand shape out with a stand, with the extended finger length it was able to hold more rings and other jewellery and so was more efficient that the other two designs.

Display units and stands

These are some of the initial ideas I had after looking through some other re brands such as 'Red Brick' and Heyerdhal. My initial thinking behind these was to make the display cabinets less separating, as we have seen from the store photos the store is quite daunting and has these circular cabinets that creates a barrier between staff and customer.

Firstly looking at the cabinets i was developing some free standing cabinets that could be moved around and changed wither seasonally or just to create a new layout once in a while. I think having these temporary layouts and displays is a great idea and allows a store to keep changing with its market. So as well as the cabinets I looked at display stands and having a boxes that hold interchangeable designs inside but also so that the boxes can be changed. They can be stacked together or singularly or hung together or placed into different slots. 

Laser Cut

After me and Luke had been inducted onto the Laser cutter we were able to use the cutter when we needed. We decided to experiment with the H.Samuel logo to see what we could come up with.

By Cutting the letters out we were able to play with the kerning and the initial layout of the logo, and with clear perspex adding a coloured back drop was really easy.

This was 3mm perspex and was really nice in creating this depth. 

We also used materials acetate so that it could be easily manipulated around other medians that we were thinking about. But when it was cutting it produced this rusty coloured dust which was harder to remove from the smaller letters, still not sure why acetate dose this, but sure it could be a great effect for something else.

Just showing how the laser cutter actually works.

Again just looking at the layout of the letters and how to play with the depth and the backdrop colours/patters. Its a great way to be able to produce loads of different layouts of something really quickly.

As well as 'cut through' you could also use three other effects, 'kiss cut', 'engrave' and 'rasterize', here we used a 'cut out' effect for the 'jewellery and gifts' and then a 'rasterize' effect for the 'H.Samuel' with a 'kiss cut' outline. although this is a great effect for subtlety  and for a tactile quality I think for the logo its a bit to subtle.

As we kept to the same measurements for all the designs we were able to mix up the different medians for a different effect. We played with placing the clear perspex into the white perspex cut outs and vice versa, I really like this effect and think with the branding colours this could be an effective technique.

Again playing the depth of the letters we looked at placing these 3D letters into a 2D background, also engraved with the logo, but it makes the brand name stand out a bit more than the rest of the logo.