Use brand exploration to find entry points for revision

Whoops, I'm back, did you miss me!

I did "Baofengyingyin App Redesign" a few days ago, but I haven't finished it yet, so today I mainly talk about how I find the entry point of the revision - brand exploration.

What can brand exploration bring us? Can it really guide us in designing? After reading this article, I guess you can understand a little bit.

Let’s take a look at the outline of my search for the entry point of the revision:

1. Experience the product and the competition to find the problem

The revision must be based on certain problems, and there are many ways to find problems, such as user feedback data, product development strategies, competitive product analysis, fashion trends, and so on.

The method I use here is to discover problems by experiencing products and competing products. Today, I will take the icon as an example:

The picture above is the original icon of Baofengyingyin APP. The problem is as follows:

1. The icon has no obvious character, serious homogeneity, and does not reflect the emotional appeal of Baofengyingyin

2. Right and rounded corners are not uniform

3. The gradient softness of the icon is not natural enough

Above is the problem I found about the icon part.

2. Brand exploration to find an entry point

Some people may wonder, what exactly does brand exploration do? In fact, it is to look at the company's history, philosophy, products, official website, and recent developments. As long as you search carefully, you will surely find some content that guides your design direction.

For example, when I searched for information, I found that in 2017, the logo of the Storm Group was revised:

From the revision of the logo, I found several small details:

1. Simple, the logo removes some details to make it more simple

2. Sharp corners, some rounded corners become sharp corners, although not pure sharp corners, but the overall look feels more square and capable.

The official article is to make the logo more technological and fashionable.

The original icon has no tonality, and the revision of the corporate logo has given us a clear tonality and direction. We can extract some keywords along the direction:

Isn't that a good entry point!

3. Optimize by combining entry points

Combining the above-refined keywords and the problems of the original icon, make the previous icon square (technology), simple (fashion), and soft gradient (this is the basic requirement).

Before revision:

After revision:

Here we can only provide you with one way of thinking. As for execution, it cannot be solved by reading a few articles. We can only rely on ourselves to practice a lot.

4. Break through and do something different

To achieve this, although the icon is a bit tonal, it is not special enough. Here is the difficulty. The key to breaking through is also here. How can b2b data we make a different feeling? At this time, we still have to start from the brand and continue. Exploration, I found that there is such an auxiliary graphic in the VI system of the enterprise:

So I extracted the key word - straight line.

But how can it be integrated into the icon design? After many attempts, the concept of "straight line" just extracted is finally integrated in the way of gradient angle.

The final effect is as follows: