My brand identity is going to be based on honesty and simplicity. I want it to be forthcoming, efficient, no-nonsense and minimal. Based on this I will stay away from Serif and Display fonts, and those with too much personality. I will instead focus on Sans serifs to achieve the minimalist look, and let the brand speak for itself.
For inspiration I looked to the brand “The Ordinary.”
The brand was created to celebrate integrity in its most humble and true form. Its offering is pioneering, not in the familiar technologies it uses, but in its honesty and integrity. The Ordinary is born to disallow commodity to be disguised as ingenuity. The Ordinary is "Clinical formulations with integrity". -[Source](https://deciem.com/en-gb/about-us.html#:~:text=The brand was created to,"Clinical formulations with integrity".)
The Ordinary logo is a wordmark, reflecting their brand values of integrity. The typeface is Raleway Sans. I like how the word ‘Ordinary’ is in bold, while ‘the’ is a normal weight. It’s a subtle but effective way to emphasise that this brand is what its says it is- ordinary.
All of the brands packaging is very minimal, with no colour or superfluous use of imagery or type. It is simple and straight to the point.
The same applies for the brand’s website. It is consistent with its lack of colour and excusive use of the Raleway sans serif typeface, which I identified using What Font.
To help decide what typeface I wanted for my wordmark, I went onto Figma and made a list of my brand names in a list of my favourite sans-serif typefaces. At this point I was still unsure on which name I was going to choose for my bank, so I thought that seeing each name as a potential work mark would help me decide which fit the idea of my brand identity so far.
The first typeface I decided on for ‘Just.’ was Be Vietnam Pro.
After deciding on using the name ‘Just.’, I needed to narrow down exactly how my wordmark should look. I chose ‘Just’ because I thought the name fully encapsulated what I wanted my brand to represent. I was daunted at first to choose it, as it is a very minimal name, but I was willing to step put of my comfort zone to design this brand.
I wanted my wordmark to look bold and eye-catching, while still remaining simple and minimalistic; to stay aligned with my brand values. I started off by centring the logomark around a enlarged uppercase J to make it stand out, but soon decided it was too flashy. My next move was to see how it looked in a tall, condensed typeface. This look made the wordmark physically quicker to read- staying in line with my brands values of a quick, streamlined experience.
I experimented with this logomark in all capitals to create a uniform look, but I thought it resembled the NIKE “Just do it” tagline too much so I scrapped that idea.
