C'est Blessed - Brand Identity

Some friends from back home got in touch over Christmas with a proposal I jumped on. They asked me to develop the visual identity for their new independent clothes company coming to the West Midlands. 
They were a much nicer experience of working in a client based scenario, as I think I learned from the work I did with Mercia - put all my conditions out on the table at the beginning, and frequently communicated over social media messaging with lots more options available for them to choose from allowing them to feel in control and satisfied. But not too much I still gave my creative critical opinion when needed and they were able to much more openly discuss their ideas with me and help develop the overall concept.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with these guys whilst home and more work possibly coming soon in collaboration with these guys.​​​​​​​

Beneath show some of the initial screenshots I sent over of what I was experimenting with for their identity. It was stated that they wanted the brand to be represented by a dove (showing peace), with some punchy typography to attract the 16-30 year old target audience. Similar brands I could identify with within the same market we agreed were the likes sold at Footasylum - Condemned Nation, Creative Recreation, Good for Nothing, etc. I had the exact target audience they were aiming for strongly in mind.

The grid approach was an obvious start, but I really liked the concept of this being stamped on clothes labels, etc. 
Not only did they need a symbol to be recognised by, but a strong logotype aswell.
I started to consider how I wanted these two different options at the end, both equally recognised - a bold, sans serif boxed logo, and then an impactful serif logotype with the same symbol centred above. 

I approached the dove in 3 different ways 
- a bold wing-spread silhouette 
- more of a refined outlined version (consider at small scale and printing/embroidering)
- a vectorised modern approach (a completely new unique approach)

I experimented with multiple typefaces but it all came down to these final two: 
- for the serif logotype - Didot (contrasting line weights, invoking quality/luxury)
- for the complimenting sans serif type beneath and the box logo - Oswald DemiBold (bold, squared solid form)

The two favoured layouts:

They also wanted one last abbreviated option, which could fit on other merchandise such as caps, bags, etc.
Similar grid approach, same typefaces used.

They wanted to see the same typeface but trying out a lowercase option aswell - but we decided this was not impactful enough as the main identity. 

They didn't like the grid approach for the abbreviated CB layouts, so I just tried out some varying type styles incl. italic to give more of an unanticipated feeling of motion to the brand!

Didot Itatic and Oswald Italic chosen for the final options for this logo aswell to give them so variation for the products. Still consistent with the rest of the identity however.

I finally mocked it all up for them to get a better feel of the brand they had started to build! A luxurious marble texture added for that extra feeling of superiority and quality they were looking for to get closer towards launching their brand!