Self Branding Ideas

I having been coming up with ideas for my self branding project and looking at myself as a person.

Something that I know about myself is that I love to gain knowledge, have new experiences, develop skills, understand people all so that I can grow as a person and a designer.

When doing some research I came across the word Ideologist, this is a person who advocate a particular ideology and deals with a system of ideas (a visionary). 

An ideology is a set of beliefs that affects our outlook on the world. Our ideology is our most closely held set of values and feelings, and it acts as the filter through which we see everything and everybody. In fact, these beliefs are oftern  so close to us that we do not realise that they are there.

I have my own strong beliefs however I find it important to understand other peoples beliefs and opinions. However after researching this I found that this is a good way of describing myself.

Here are some of my beliefs,

• You need to find a way to be positive
• Everything is always developing and evolving into something better and this is important.
• Never give up with what you believe in
• Things happen to you as a person only make you stinger and develop your personality.

The idea behind my branding

Kate Higgins // Ideologist

I believe that as a designer it is important to grow and develop skills with new experiences and gaining knowledge. I am very strong at knowing my beliefs and I also want to understand people and grow as a designer and a person.

Designers that are good to follow on instagram

There are many good graphic design instagram accounts that give me inspiration everyday as I flick through my timeline. I also enjoy book instagram accounts as I can look at the cover designs. In the future I will create a design account for my work to go onto.

• TadCarpenter is a Designer and illustrator, I like his children's book design and brightly coloured prints.
• Handlettereddesign is two friends Addi and Lisa who do hand lettering. I love to look at calligraphy and they create lettering with many materials.
• Homsweethom is a traveling illustrator who does calligraphy style typography and other forms of lettering
• ChrisRushing is a designer who shares his great photography and designs.
• BookBaristas and EpicReads are two of my favourite book instagrams.

Initial Self Branding ideas and development

Originally when thinking of what I could do for my self branding I thought of what I things I liked.In an early critique people gave me feedback that I could try to create little gifts or mac accessories as I liked digital work best.  I also got in a group and we described what we thought each others identity was like from what we knew of each others personalities and design work.









My mind map said that I was

• Honest
• Zen
• Smiley
• Butterfly
• Calm
• Modest and understated
• Quietly Confident
• Purple
• Buzzfeed
• AM
• Photography

I used this exercise to inspire my ideas for my branding.

One of my initial ideas was to create a logo which is a elephant with butterfly wings for ears. The butterfly aspect was to resemble the growth of my design and the elephant symbolises my calm nature. I also had the idea to have a short video of my designs on a memory stick, instead of having a business card or letterhead which is stereotypical self branding.

However I decided against these ideas after my critiques as people thought that the butterfly and elephant designs were not representing my ideas enough. Also the video idea was less in my style and I needed something true to myself.

Another logo idea I experimented with was a purple book as it is my favourite colour mixed with my interest of reading and book design. I thought that this logo design was a nice concept and something I could think back to in the future but for now I needed a more general idea.

Websites to look at book design

I love to look at book design websites to see what is current and what designs I like the best. One web site I like to use is http://thebookdesignblog.com
It shows you books and tells you the publishers and designers who create them and where you can buy them from. It shows a wide variety of book designs for different genres.

Recently something that caught my eye was the Small World Project which is a collection of books that looks at the  exploration into the “six degrees of separation” by Dan Burgess. In order to gather data, 3 chain letters, each with an attached questionnaire were sent out and tracked as they travelled around the globe. Participants filled in the data and forwarded on the letters to individuals of their choice. The data from each journey was then compiled into individual books, along with an artists impression of the individuals involved based on their own descriptions of themselves, drawn by Aurora Cacciapuoti. I loved the design of the books but also the idea behind them.