Research (Crosswater Brief)

source: http://www.crosswater.co.uk/

The crosswater web page is http://www.crosswater.co.uk/, it describes how the British run company has been working for years to create a new luxury futuristic style of tap and bathroom designs.  The current logo (above, source http://www.crosswater.co.uk) is created based around a lot of the shapes used in the main styles of the companies work (this is seen clearly in the tap designs). This shows the company takes pride in their work therefore wants to reflect it clearly.The current design is very gender and colour neural, this is to help it appeal to both genders, the colour scheme = reflect their target market because it give a simple idea with a small amount of blue to link towards the water (bathrooms, plumbing ect) whilst linking to the modern minimal simple feel. The main design aspect of the text is the font itself, it a clever blend of the tap design elements and the simple curved edges used in the work only mixed with the idea of a free flowing water (no straight ages).

For inspiration we looked at the exclusive designers that work for the company and into their work they do, this gave us a feel of how their current brand and their products, they work with famous contemporary designers like Kelly Hoppen, Mike Pro, Belgravia, Waldof, Dial. They are all modern current designers who design simple classic piece with a futuristic minimalistic twist.These all have different unique designs but from these different expensive collection we can get an insight into the target market along with what they like and the artist styles they care for . The work of the company was very important to how we rebrand, we'll look at it more too see what the customers like and what sells well. It also give us a look in to their favourite design styles or any movements that are current, we can used this information for our rebrand.  This have given us a feel for how the shops wants to be shown and presented to its audience which will help us when we design the logo because we now know what the

We've looked at other bathroom stores logos and other luxury brand logo designs to see how the are kept classic and modern,  i want to get a feel of how existing brands make their logos reflect their aims and themes. From this research i can see they stick to a minimal, simple style using a very small colour scheme with usually just typography. They use mostly serifs fonts but this is used more by the older antic ones who are going for a classic vintage idea, this font style is then used to reflect their classic style and to show how they work. This means that we show reflect the modern style of our company with a new young font like Helvetica light, the sans serif font would should a more modern font than a serif font.I think we should stick to a very small amount of colour if any in our logo, this is seen in their brand and i feel it adds expense and elegance suitable to the brands ideas.

Logos

A few years ago i bought a book on logo design and rebranding, i felt it was relvent for this brief as it has lots of different famous logos and how they've changed over the years. The book is called Logo Life - Life histories of 100 famous logos by Ron van der Vlugt. I've skimmed through this book a lot and feel its good because you can see how logos have changed and the times they changed allowinh you to take in historical, political and different factors into why they rebranded. This shows the meanings of rebrands that worked and what didn't, i've selected the most relevant to this project by looking at brands that aim towards by target audience as well as the one that use mostly typography.